JPMorgan | Business Upturn

JPMorgan names new co-heads for India Investment Banking following Navin Wadhwani’s departure: Report

Aditya Bhagchandani — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:19:10 +0000

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has appointed Nitin Maheshwari and Ravi Shankar as co-heads of its investment banking division in India, following the exit of Navin Wadhwani. The promotions aim to bolster the US lender’s leadership in India’s dynamic market.

According to a memo seen by Bloomberg News, Maheshwari and Shankar will assume Wadhwani’s previous responsibilities. Maheshwari has been leading mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and financial sponsors in India, while Shankar oversaw technology, media, telecommunications, consumer, and retail sectors.

Wadhwani, who joined JPMorgan in 2022 after heading M&A for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, recently left to explore new opportunities. The new co-heads will report to Paul Uren, head of investment banking for Asia Pacific, and Kaustubh Kulkarni, JPMorgan’s senior country officer for India. Maheshwari will also continue reporting to Rohit Chatterji, head of M&A for APAC.

India emerged as a prominent market for deals in 2024, raising over $20 billion through share sales, including Hyundai Motor Co.’s record-breaking $3.3 billion IPO. This leadership change underscores JPMorgan’s commitment to maintaining its competitive edge in the country’s flourishing investment banking sector.

JPMorgan upgrades KPIT Tech to ‘Overweight’, sees 20% upside from current price of Rs 1,673

News Desk — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 03:04:22 +0000

JPMorgan has upgraded KPIT Technologies to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ with a target price of ₹2,000, indicating a potential upside of 20% from its current market price of ₹1,673. The stock has underperformed in the last one and three months due to delays in EV targets by global OEMs.

However, companies like BMW and Honda remain committed to long-term EV goals, making KPIT a top pick in the ER&D sector. JPMorgan also raised its revenue and EPS estimates for the company.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Please consult a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Zomato shares jump 3% after JPMorgan ups target price, sees 40% upside

Aditya Bhagchandani — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 03:48:17 +0000

Shares of Zomato increased by 3% following JPMorgan’s upgrade of its target price to ₹340, up from ₹208. This new target suggests a potential 40% upside from the current trading price of ₹242 on the NSE as of September 4.

JPMorgan has maintained an “Overweight” rating on Zomato, noting the company’s strong performance in transforming retail consumer habits through its Quick Commerce (QC) business, particularly with Blinkit. Zomato is expanding its presence in metro cities after proving its business model in the National Capital Region (NCR), which now contributes 50% to Gross Order Value (GOV) and store count.

The firm believes that as more Blinkit stores achieve positive daily sales, the financial outlook will improve, allowing Blinkit to scale up faster and outperform its competitors.

As of 9:15 AM today, Zomato shares were trading 2.74% higher at ₹249.50 on the NSE.

JPMorgan increases target price for Zomato shares, expects another 40% upside

Markets Desk — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 02:24:59 +0000

JPMorgan has raised its price target on Zomato to ₹340 from ₹208, projecting a 40% upside from the current price of ₹242 on the NSE as of September 4. The firm remains “Overweight” on Zomato, emphasizing that the company is driving a rapid retail consumer transformation, particularly in its convenience-focused Quick Commerce (QC) business, led by Blinkit.

Zomato is expanding deeper into metro cities after proving the business model in NCR, which now accounts for 50% of Gross Order Value (GOV) and store count. The scaling of this model is expected to enhance monetization opportunities through channel margins and advertising spending.

JPMorgan highlights that with the majority of Blinkit stores crossing positive daily sales thresholds, the incremental store economics should turn more positive on the EBITDA front. This financial performance gives Blinkit the green light to accelerate its scale-up faster than its competitors and even beyond its current targets.

JPMorgan initiates coverage on Indegene, sets share price target at Rs 570

Markets Desk — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 02:44:12 +0000

JPMorgan has initiated coverage on Indegene, assigning a “Neutral” rating with a target price of ₹570 per share. The brokerage notes that Indegene experienced a slowdown in growth following the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily due to client-specific challenges and a weakening macroeconomic environment.

However, JPMorgan expects Indegene’s growth to rebound to early teens by FY26, projecting a stable low-teens growth trajectory thereafter. Despite this potential recovery, the firm observes that Indegene is currently trading at a premium compared to most TechOps companies and at the upper end of its mid-cap tech services peers.

Given the full valuations and uncertain visibility on new launches, JPMorgan considers the stock to be fairly priced at current levels.

TVS Motor share price surges 3% to hit all time high as UBS and JPMorgan turn bullish on the stock

Markets Desk — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 04:01:10 +0000

TVS Motor share price surges over 3% in trade today to hit an all-time high of Rs 2,818 after brokerages like UBS and JPMorgan increased their target prices for the stock. As of 9:25 AM, TVS Motor share price was at Rs 2,803.15, up 3.48% against the previous close. JPMorgan in its latest note has increased target price for TVS Motor to Rs 3,050 and upgraded the stock to Overweight. UBS too increased its target price for TVS Motor shares to Rs 3,200 per share.

UBS’ recommendation comes in the wake of the company’s recent launch of the new Jupiter scooter, which UBS analysts view as a significant upgrade over both its predecessor and competitors, while maintaining a similar price point.

The new Jupiter model is expected to boost TVS Motors’ sales by an additional 15,000 to 20,000 units. UBS analysts believe that the launch of this upgraded scooter will provide a substantial volume boost for the company.

In addition to the new Jupiter, TVS Motors is anticipated to unveil a brand-new electric two-wheeler (E-2W) and enter the electric three-wheeler (E3W) market in the coming months. UBS views these upcoming launches as potential catalysts for further growth and market expansion for the company.

Bharti Hexacom Share Price: JPMorgan initiates coverage, expects 20% upside in stock price

Markets Desk — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 23:45:36 +0000

Global brokerage firm JPMorgan has initiated coverage on Bharti Hexacom, assigning an Overweight rating to the stock. JPMorgan has a target price of Rs 1,280 on Bharti Hexacom stock, which implies a 20% upside in Bharti Hexacom shares from its CMP of Rs 1,065.20.

JPMorgan highlights Bharti Hexacom as the “best India market repair pure-play,” noting that it operates in two underpenetrated circles, Rajasthan and the Northeast. These regions have lower teledensity, internet penetration, and postpaid mix, positioning Hexacom to benefit from strong tailwinds in subscriber growth and organic Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) expansion.

One of the significant advantages for Bharti Hexacom is its cost efficiency. The company’s spectrum cost per population (pop) for 5G is 54% and for 4G is 62% lower than Bharti’s national average. This cost advantage allows Hexacom to maintain competitive pricing while delivering superior returns.

Moreover, Hexacom’s ARPU is only 2% below Bharti’s national average, indicating strong underlying returns. JPMorgan projects a 15% tariff hike each in FY25 and FY26, driving a 17% revenue CAGR and a 21% EBITDA CAGR over FY24-27E.

The report also emphasizes Bharti Hexacom’s strategic position in the wireless market, which constitutes 98% of its revenues. This focus contrasts with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, which have more diversified revenue streams. The brokerage believes this makes Hexacom the best play on the Indian market repair thesis.

Additionally, JPMorgan forecasts a significant increase in dividend payouts, from 23% in FY24 to 34% in FY27, driven by improving free cash flow from tariff hikes and falling capital expenditures.

IndiGo shares can rally upto 31% from hereon, say brokerages post Q3 results

Markets Desk — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 03:10:51 +0000

Brokerages continue to remain upbeat on the country’s top domestic airline – IndiGo (Interglobe Aviation) after the company posted its fifth consecutive quarter of profit. Top brokerages like JPMorgan. UBS and Morgan Stanley have raised their target price on the stock significantly higher from the Friday’s closing price of Rs 3,145 after the company’s Q3 earnings.

Morgan Stanley has revised its target price for IndiGo to Rs 4,145, implying a 31% upside on the stock price against its Friday’s close of Rs 3,145. Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating on the stock and believes that IndiGo’s strong balance sheet and healthy vendor relationships is helping to offset hit from aircraft grounding issues.

UBS and JPMorgan have also raised their target price for IndiGo to Rs 3,900 and Rs 3,470 respectively after its Q3 numbers. UBS has a Buy rating on IndiGo, while JPMorgan remains Overweight on the stock, Their latest target prices imply an upside of 24% and 10% respectively for the stock.

IndiGo’s Q3 net profit surged 111% on a YoY basis at Rs 2,998 crore against a net profit of Rs 1,423 crore posted in the same period last year. The company’s revenue from operations also jumped 30% to Rs 19,452 crore against Rs 14,933 crore in Q3FY23.

JPMorgan Chase India unit has received RBI permission for a new bank CEO

Aryan Jakhar — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 15:42:20 +0000

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has got clearance from India’s central bank to appoint Prabdev Singh as the lender’s CEO in the nation.

The Reserve Bank of India authorised Singh’s three-year term last week, according to a JPMorgan spokesperson in an emailed response to Bloomberg on Tuesday. An email sent to the RBI was not returned.

Singh has been the temporary CEO of JPMorgan’s local banking unit since November, succeeding Madhav Kalyan, who was named Asia Pacific head of payments in October. According to Bloomberg News, Kaustubh Kulkarni was designated senior country officer for India at JPMorgan at the time and will continue in his job as vice chair of Asia Pacific.

The Wall Street business, which has been in India since 1922, began commercial banking activities there around 15 years ago. According to statistics on its website, JPMorgan operates four commercial bank branches in the nation.

According to his Linkedin page, Singh, a professional engineer, spent a decade with HSBC Holdings Plc before joining JPMorgan in 2010.

JPMorgan reduces the stock rating on Tata Motors as wholesale volumes for JLR decline

Aryan Jakhar — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 07:00:38 +0000

In the opening hours of Monday, shares of Tata Motors Ltd fell about 5% to Rs. 393 per share on the BSE following the automaker’s disclosure of lower-than-anticipated wholesale volumes for its Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) business and a downgrade of the auto stock by international brokerage JP Morgan.

For the second quarter, Tata Motors’ wholesale volumes for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) (excluding its joint venture in China) were 75,307, compared to its August forecast of approximately 90,000. The manufacturer, which is among the biggest in the nation, attributed its failure to fulfil its goal to a lower-than-anticipated supply of specialised chips from one supplier. However, it asserted that increased revenues in the second half of the fiscal year will result from new agreements with semiconductor vendors.

JPMorgan said in a note that it was reducing the shares of Tata Motors to “neutral” from “overweight” and lowering its target price to Rs 455 (from Rs 525). “We would need more clarity on the pace of production recovery at Jaguar Land Rover to turn constructive on the stock,” JPMorgan added.

In September, Tata Motors’ overall domestic sales rose by 44% to 80,633 units. In September 2021, the company had delivered 55,988 units to dealers. The Mumbai-based automaker claimed that its overall domestic passenger vehicle dispatches increased by 85% in September 2021 to 25,730 units, reaching 47,654 units last month.

According to Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Managing Director Shailesh Chandra, the company’s sales last month of 47,654 were the greatest monthly total ever, driven by record sales of the Nexon and Punch. “With the recent launch of the Tiago EV, the company has opened new vistas and is poised to drive the mass adoption of EVs across the country. Going forward, we expect the festive season will witness strong retail on the back of improving the supply of vehicles,” he added.

Government subsidies and high import tariffs have helped Tata take the lead in India’s EV market, and the business plans to increase its electric PV portfolio from 3 EVs at the moment to 10 EVs by FY26. Existing EV owners opting for a more compact vehicle with upscale features are the target market for Tiago EV.

JPMorgan takes Tesla to court over unpaid warrants & Elon Musk’s tweets

News Desk — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 05:34:10 +0000

JPMorgan Chase & Co has sued Tesla, seeking payment of $162 million for warrants that expired above their strike price. The situation had been muddled by Tesla creator Elon Musk’s proposal to take the electric car firm private in a tweet in 2018.

JPMorgan contends that the Aug. 7, 2018 tweet amounted to a substantial corporate transaction that authorised it to alter the strike price, which it did in order to keep the strike price at the same fair market value as before the announcement. JPMorgan re-adjusted the strike price to reflect the increase in the share price after Tesla abandoned the going-private transaction on August 24 of that year.

“Even though JPMorgan’s changes were appropriate and contractually required,” the bank wrote in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday. “Tesla has refused to settle at the contractual strike price and pay in full what it owes to JPMorgan.” “Tesla has broken its contract in the most egregious way possible. As a result, Tesla owes JPMorgan more than US$162 million right away.”

The automaker complained in February 2019 that the bank’s revisions were “an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of swings in volatility in Tesla’s shares,” but JPMorgan maintained the manufacturer did not contest the underlying calculations. Musk and Tesla were each fined $20 million by the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a result of Musk’s comments.

JP Morgan plans to buy a majority stake of close to 75% in Volkswagen’s payments business

News Desk — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 11:23:19 +0000

On Wednesday, JP Morgan said that it has a plan to buy plans to buy a majority stake of close to 75% of Volkswagen Payments business. The firm’s payments arm was established in Luxembourg in 2017 and manages work across 32 countries. It provides various customers to buy car and leasing, in-vehicle payments, fuelling, and electric vehicle charging, along with subscription services such as insurance and in-vehicle entertainment.

JP Morgan plans to invest in and change the image of the payments business and lengthen its mobility-focused payments to other industries. For the first time, the deal would help to enter into the automotive industry and would help in expanding the digital payment methods said the U.S. banking giant.

Shahrokh Moinian, EMEA head of wholesale payments at JP Morgan said in a statement to Reuters, “We plan to build on Volkswagen Financial Services’ innovative groundwork on the existing platform and apply the global scale of our payments expertise to meet evolving customer expectations in the auto space and beyond.”

“One of the fastest-growing platforms is the connected car marketplace, whereby the car acts like a wallet for purchasing goods, services or subscriptions.” Shahrokh Moinian added according to Reuters. Yet the financial terms of the deal were not revealed.

Volkswagen’s financial services division will continue to have a 25.1% stake in the payments business, JP Morgan said. Whereas the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.

However in its half-year result in July the Volkswagen Group did not give any information about the breakdown of earnings for the payments business but said that sales at its financial services arm were 22.6 billion euros ($26.77 billion), up to 18% on the prior year.

Bitcoin has potential to reach $146,000 in long term: JP Morgan

Devanshu Singla — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 06:22:09 +0000

According to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bitcoin has the potential to reach $146,000 in the long term as it competes with gold as an asset class.

Strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said that Bitcoin’s market capitalization of around $575 billion would have to rise by 4.6 times — for a theoretical price of $146,000 — to match the total private sector investment in gold via exchange-traded funds or bars and coins. But that outlook depends on the volatility of Bitcoin converging with that of gold to encourage more institutional investment, a process that will take some time.

“A crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies a big upside for Bitcoin over the long term.” However, “a convergence in volatilities between Bitcoin and gold is unlikely to happen quickly and is in our mind a multiyear process,” the strategists wrote.

On Monday, Bitcoin slid as much as 17%, the biggest drop since March, after breaching $34,000 for the first time over the weekend. The swings are a reminder of the famed volatility of the largest cryptocurrency, whose price has more than quadrupled over the past year.

More institutions and noted investors, from Paul Tudor Jones to Scott Minerd and Stan Druckenmiller, have either started allocating funds into Bitcoin or have said they’re open to doing so. While some argue that the cryptocurrency offers a hedge against dollar weakness and inflation risk in a world awash with fiscal and monetary stimulus, others say retail investors and trend-following quant funds are pumping up an unsustainable bubble.

Alphabet Inc to disclose first ever Google Cloud profit

Ruchira Sonawat — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 06:13:04 +0000

Quarterly sales record for the internet’s biggest platform for ads to get overshadowed as Alphabet Inc will report the cost and operating profit of its Google Cloud business for the first time on Tuesday.

Google dominates rivals Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc in the ad business and has also created a surge in demand for both parts of Google’s cloud business: computing services for retailers and other companies and corporate productivity suites including tools like Gmail.

Google may be ready to show that its heavy investment in staff and data centres to catch up in the industry is finally paying off, say analysts.

An increasing concern for Wall Street related to Alphabet’s costs has been looming as sales growth from the advertising business flattens out. The company started disclosing Cloud and YouTube sales a year ago. Alphabet will provide a detailed annual breakdown for Cloud going back three years.

Wall Street analysts forecast fourth-quarter Cloud sales of $3.82 billion for Google, with expectations for the unit to cross $13 billion in annual sales, according to Refinitiv data.

The JPMorgan analysts estimate Google Cloud spent about 40% more in 2020 than Amazon’s cloud unit did in 2016 when it had about $12 billion in sales. Google’s spending reflects higher competition, as well as cloud vendors expanding into newer technologies.

Analysts expect Google’s advertising business will post $42.6 billion in fourth-quarter sales, pushing overall Alphabet quarterly revenue to $53 billion. That would leave Alphabet with 2020 sales of $179 billion and profit of $11 billion.