What are your thoughts on stake sales plan of Vodafone? Will they pay off the debt at least partially?

Although I know for sure that this quarter’s results will be excellent, I have made the decision to exit the company completely. Morally also it is very wrong what has happened and there is a chance of prosecution of the directors.
Company announced of it’s Telengana approval yet didn’t inform when they lost it few days later. Also even if it was an associate company, they are the owners of that corporation and their hired employees chose the contractors who did this vile act. From the pictures as well they really look like small kids so I don’t know how anyone could confuse them for adults and even so, I don’t think any adult should be having burns on their hands regardless of the age.

Disc – Was invested, exited today

Sector Tailwind, Make in India and very Large Adressable Market. I assume once company grows some more backend manufacturing ( Like SMT they have started doing) they may start. A parallel may be drawn from Sirca Paints Ltd., iniitially they were only dealer of Itly Company and now manufacturing their own items.
Disclosure: Invested

When we usually calculate ROIC (Return on Invested Capital), it is more often the returns being generated on capital that has already been invested, could be a one year ago or ten. We want to know the returns the company can earn on their future investments and to get a better idea of that we try and calculate the return on ‘incremental’ capital invested i.e. incremental recent investments.

A rough way to do that is take the amount of capital the said business has added over x amount years and compare with the incremental growth in earnings (net income) in that period of time.

ROICI = Change in earnings / Total Capital Invested.

In case of Maharashtra Seamless, Total Capital Invested from 2015-2024 was ~2,017Cr, TCI is nothing but (Equity + Debt & CLO – Goodwill). And during the same period earnings increased by ~833Cr, so they basically invested 2,107Cr of incremental capital and earned 833Cr. I’m missing a few decimals here but the return on incremental capital they invested is ~41%.

During the above period, the 2,017Cr was ~68% of their cumulative earnings within that timeframe. So they were deploying/reinvesting 68% of their capital @ 41.3%, so to find out what the entire company’s value is being compounded at, we need to multiple the above two percentages and we get 28.1%.

Historically, a stock’s performance over the course of time either reverts or increases to the rate at which they are compounding their own value.

A great big deal of Indian equities actually have high ROICI, this is because there is a lot of scope for growth and even the largest companies in India by mkt cap can still be considered to be in their growth phase. Perks of being an emerging market with a huge TAM.

Heads in Beds, Jacob Tomsky, 2012 – The author (not his real name) has worked in the hospitality business from being a valet to the guy who checked you in or out, to running housekeeping. You get an insiders view of how a hotel functions, from the nitty-gritties of how minibar is replenished or accounted for, to how a bellman works/thinks, to how frontdesk staff can be influenced into giving you a good price or upgrade or even the way the top management runs the hotel and what their priorities are.

Some of the useful things I found – Its easy to get charges waived – especially charges where there’s no real cost/low cost to the hotel. Tip the front-desk staff “before” they give you a room (he works for you now) – but hang back and find the right agent before you do – the one who is most bored but also efficient knows the system well and is likely not a new hire. Make sure you memorise the name, if you are a regular and so on. Be sympathetic because very likely most of the staff is overworked. The bellhop for eg. relies a lot on the tips to supplement his earnings. Don’t be on the phone while you check-in, don’t plonk your card and don’t treat service staff as servants etc.

The perspective of a front-desk agent gives you a slice of the world that is unique and there’s very good observations on the kinds – from families on vacation to business travellers to large groups and even celebrities (author has very good things to say about Brian Wilson of The Beach boys). The book was a breeze to read as it was humorous and includes a host of colorful characters that you could connect with and root for – almost as if it were fiction. I could see a lot of Bukowski influence in the writing (from something like ‘Factotum’ which is a big fav of mine). If you are having trouble starting/resuming reading, or come from reading fiction with no exposure to non-fiction, a book like this is ideal way to get started. 8/10