Outlook Business has a nice write up on Bhavook Tripathi with his picture which leads us to first apologize to Bhavook Tripathi for taking creative liberties while describing him. Sorry, Sir!
Now, lets get to the point.
Bhavook Tripathi’s investing philosophy can be summed up in Gordon Gekko’s pithy words “The public’s out there throwing darts at a board, sport. I don’t throw darts at a board – I bet on sure things“.
While most investors are clueless and invest a bit here and a bit there, hoping and praying that something somewhere will click, Bhavook Tripathi does not believe in that.
Instead, he likes to wait patiently for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show up, and when it does, he acts with courage and conviction and pledges a sizeable chunk of his wealth on that bet.
Bhavook Tripathi made his first fortune from FAG Precision Bearings. In hindsight, it appears ridiculous that the stock of a blue chip MNC, engaged in the business of supply of high-precision ball bearings to leading automobile companies, should have a market capitalization of only Rs. 35 crores. That aberration was caused by the fact that the public was, at that time (1999), obsessed with high-growth I. T. stocks like Infosys and Wipro and nobody had time for stocks like FAG.
Here, you must compliment Bhavook Tripathi for his vision and courage. He had the vision to see that the World would soon turn its attention to FAG Bearings and he had the courage to invest a huge chunk of his resources in the stock. Well, he was soon proved right because FAG Bearings is a multibagger several times over.
Bhavook Tripathi sold his entire holding in FAG Bearings but only to raise a war chest for his second stock pick Solvay Pharma.
Here again, you have to compliment Bhavook Tripathi. A lot of people read the news item that Abbott Labs was buying over Solvay Pharma in a global deal but few paid any attention to that news. But Bhavook Tripathi realized that this news meant that Abbott would, sooner or later, have to make an open offer to the other shareholders of Solvay Pharma.
In hindsight, it was so obvious that the deal had all the makings of a super duper multibagger stock. A giant conglomerate buying over Global assets and willing to pay any sum of money to the piffling Indian shareholders to let go of the stock.
However, things were not as clear then and in the great uncertainty that followed, Solvay Pharma’s stock price plunged and fluctuated wildly. While most investors would have panicked, Bhavook Tripathi kept his cool and used every opportunity to buy more and more of Solvay’s stock.
In the end, four years later, while Bhavook Tripathi had bought the shares for as low as Rs. 488, he sold them in the open offer at the price of Rs. 3,054, netting a gigantic profit for himself.
Excel Crop Care is another of Bhavook Tripathi’s success stories. Excel Crop Care is India’s largest manufacturer of Endosulphen and was happily chugging along. When the Supreme Court suddenly banned the sale of Endosulphen, Excel Crop’s World fell apart. Bhavook Tripathi did not buy then but he waited patiently for the quarterly results to be released because he knew that the results would be terrible and frightened investors would dump the stock. The prediction came true and Excel Crop’s stock price plunged from Rs. 225 to Rs. 89 in a matter of weeks. When the carnage subsided, Bhavook Tripathi walked to the ruins and quietly picked up a mammoth quantity of 3,88,691 shares, comprising 7% of its equity. Well, again the predictable happened. The Supreme Court relaxed the terms of the ban and investors are queuing up to buy Excel Crop again. Bhavook Tripathi is happy to give them the shares, but at the price of Rs. 225, netting multibagger profits for himself.
Bhavook Tripathi is today worth in excess of Rs. 250 crores and his reputation is now riding on his latest stock pick R Systems International, where he has invested a mammoth Rs. 69 crores. If Bhavook Tripathi manages to pull this one off as well, he will seal his reputation as a top notch deal maker and stock picker.
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