Guys, I am new to this forum but trust me when I saw I have closely followed the sugar stocks and sugar cycle since the past 3 years. It seems that the turnaround in sugar cycle is finally dawning. Although, it is all bleak when we look at the news emanating from the individual sugar mills and the industry body ISMA, BUT if we go through the price trends in the commodity market – more particularly the Sugar delivery price, then a turnaround is soo obvious that it cannot be ignored by any investor interested in cyclical investing.

I am attaching the weekly price chart along with my comments. I would like to request knowledgeable boarders to comment on this…either on valuepickr or on the moneycontrol message board.

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Another molecule enters Phase-1 trial.

http://corporates.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/270CA049_7A39_4C1F_9045_EED9FE80F848_103327.pdf

Suven now has 3 clinical stage compounds, a Phase 2 initiated candidate SUVN-502, Phase 1 completed candidate SUVN-G3031 and Phase 1 initiated candidate SUVN-D4010 for Alzheimer’s disease and Schizophrenia. In addition to that the Company has ten (10) internally-discovered therapeutic drug candidates currently in pre-clinical stage of development targeting conditions such as ADHD, dementia, depression, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and pain.

They were non-comittal on the European subsidiaries. Their immediate focus is to upgrade the quality first by making necessary investments and then gain share in the domestic market.

On the competition front- Osram has opened an India plant.

Spoke to someone in the Karnataka market. MT’s strategy on partnering with PUC’s is certainly interesting.

-Minimal Capital investment in the PUC model. Investment limited to some infrastrucutre related issues such as AC’s /Desks etc. Maximum investment is ~ 20-25 Lakhs/centre
-PUC Model is successful if both MT & the other partner has a long term view. Maintaining a JV (partnership) is a difficult proposition. One is actually managing egos so it can break down. So far no MT has not had anyone walking out of the partnership
-Typically MT goes after not so well doing campuses and then tries to turn them around. Here the biggest factor is good results. The key factor are results. At the moment Karnataka has 18-19 locations, of this 70-75% are doing well
-Sold the Managalore PUC college as it wasn’t doing well. Didn’t break even after 5 years so sold it off to recover investments. Sold it at no profit no loss.
-PUC model is more profitable than the normal model that MT follows. Slowly others are getting into PUC model as well, given its attractiveness. FIITJEE is coming in Bangalore but they are focusing on IIT. MT is focusing more on state boards at the moment
-Most of the PUC players are small and don’t have any plans of scaling up as such. As such there are not many organized players. There are 3-4 bigger players (Sri Chaitanya, Nalanda, Narayana & Deeksha) but none of them is doing well. Deeksha is winding up. MT has been expanding in the last 2 years. Plans to reach 30 tie-ups in the next 2 years. More than 70% of MT’s partnerships are doing well.
-MT doesn’t advertise a teacher or set of teachers. Other small PUCs focus on that. MT’s pitch is more about technology and its scale that it has achieved in other geographies
-Having established its first college in Mangalore- MT has a good brand recall across Karnataka. Mangalore is an education hub in K’taka.
-Karnataka has ~ 5000 students and the geography is profitable. Contributing 10-15% of revenues.

@fabregas could you please check and let us know how they are doing in asset liability mismatch and what kind of NIM they have? Along with NPA’s these are probably pretty important in valuing a housing finance company.