CCI has given its approval just last week for the acquisition.

Not sure how many more approvals have to be obtained before open offer can start

So, we are saying that Piccadily would sell around 20000 * 365 bottles an year ~ 6 lakh cases an year. As per this article, in 2022, total scotch sales were at ~ 3 lakh cases and total Indian single malt sales were at ~ 3 lakh sales. If you look at the growth of Glenlivet in the last 9 years, it went from 27500 cases per year in 2014 to 88000 cases in 2024 at a CAGR ~ 13. Momentum seems to have picked after covid but this growth could also be attributed to the dip in sales during covid. Single malt sales are growing at a CAGR of 20% from 110,000 in 2014 to 577,000 in 2023. Assuming the same growth rate for 5 years, they might probably hit around 38k cases per year. I am not sure of the margins per bottle but the 6 lakh number seems too big to achieve. Correct me if I am wrong.

I think, it should be seen in context with the size of the company. A very small company whose reports are audited by even smaller auditors, who may or may not be auditing other companies, who are qualified to audit, but are not well versed in a foreign language like English, despite being educated and working in a profession, dealing with many documents every single day. I could be wrong here, or I am wrong here, but it happens more with the rest of India than with Southern states, relatively. Sometimes I find the scanned copies of documents difficult to read, as they are not scanned properly. On the same note, read a reply about a member who read an AR, which was colorful, glittering and it made him suspicious.

Again, the size of the company, and the kind of business the company does matter, along with the perspectives of management, their values, their journey, their work culture etc. They really want to take care of their own people and do their part for society, and perhaps want to gain some good name in doing so. For gaining more insights, one can read or watch interviews of management to look at such activities in conjunction.

Hence, there is also the qualitative part of a business, one that cannot be quantifiable.

Just some thoughts, make your interpretations and draw your own inferences, as these are part of investing process.

Very informative. Would you mind explaining what is ‘inventory turn” and how boosting this implies better RoE? Thanks!

I have been reading a few annual reports this month and I have a few questions regarding some observations which I have made in annual report of some companies:

1. What do you make of an annual report which has a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes? Yes the annual report should focus on numbers and some typos/ grammatical errors would not change the meaning as such. But an annual report is a public document which may be accessed by a wide variety of readers, hence a basic grammar and spell check is elementary! I mean I would even spell check this post!!

2. How do you make sense of a company who is focusing a lot on the CSR and Employee well being part in the annual report. Almost 12-13% pages in the annual report are completely devoted to CSR and Employee well being sections. I may sound like a devil’s advocate here but this is something unusual for me (I have read annual reports of almost 60-70 companies in the last 3-4 years).

3. Some Independent directors of Mrs. Bector’s Foods are also the independent directors in Trident Ltd. And as far as I remember, the promoters of these companies are related to each other (Anoop Bector’s son being married to Rajinder Gupta’s daughter, I believe). This also came to light when IT department raided Bector’s’ director’s home in relation to search/ raid on Trident Group in Oct’23!

Any views on the above would be helpful!!