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Bajaj Finance Ltd>
  • CMP : 6,767.6 Chg : 36.40 (0.54%)
  • Target : 7,250.0 (16.94%)
  • Target Period : 12-18 Month

27 Apr 2023

Healthy quarter, management rigour holds key for future…

About The Stock

Bajaj Finance, a strong NBFC with digital footprints, made a strong comeback with AUM growth reaching ~26-28% YoY. Harnessing its large franchise base digitally offers a huge opportunity. Housing forms 31% of the book.

  • Bajaj Finance maintained strong operating metrics over various credit, rate cycles leading to >19% RoE, >4% RoA and maintains that guidance also
Q4FY23

In line performance; robust long term guidance maintained.

  • AUM grew 25% YoY (core AUM grew 29% YoY), NII growth at 23.8% YoY to ₹7433 crore, marginal uptick in cost of funds
  • Asset quality has improved with Q4 GNPA and NNPA ratio declining to 0.94% and 0.34% from 1.14% and 0.41%, respectively, in Q3FY23
  • PAT grew 30% YoY, 6% QoQ to ₹ 3156 crore, with RoE at 24% and RoA at 5.4% (annualised)
What should Investors do?

The stock has been consolidating for the last one year. We believe the long range strategy to reach 4-5% of retail credit (~3.5% by FY27E) in India is believable considering the management’s proven track record on meeting guidance. Valuations have contacted over time. It now trades at 4.5x FY25E ABV and 20x FY25E PAT making it reasonable. The management reiterated that it has no plans to convert into a bank.

  •  We maintain BUY rating on the stock, offering compounding returns
Target Price and Valuation

Omnipresence strategy and organic momentum building up offers comfort on growth sustainability. We maintain our target price at ₹ 7250 with a rather lower multiple of ~5.4x FY25E ABV vs. 5.7x earlier.

Key Triggers for future price performance
  • The management has rolled out a five-year long range strategy (LRS), aiming for 3-4% share in total credit and 4-5% share in retail credit
  • Digital transformation, client additions and ambitious targets on AUM growth (25-27% CAGR) to boost profitability. We expect >21% PAT growth in the next two years
  • Stable asset quality and controlled costs expected to continue
  • RoE at ~19-21% and RoA at 4-4.5%
Alternate Stock

Besides Bajaj Finance, in our coverage we also like Axis Bank.

  • Axis Bank is the third largest private sector bank in India with a balance sheet size of ₹ 12.2 lakh crore as on December 2022
  • We have a BUY rating with a target price of ₹ 1100

Key Financial Summary

Particulars FY20 FY21 FY22 FY23 3 Year CAGR(FY20-FY23) FY24E FY25E 2 Year CAGR (FY23-FY25E)
NII (| crore) 16,900.6 17,254.1 21,891.8 28,846.0 19.5 35,589.4 44,347.7 24.0
PPP (| crore) 11,251.6 11,960.8 14,314.8 18,800.0 18.7 23,305.2 29,318.2 24.9
PAT (| crore) 5,263.8 4,419.8 7,035.8 11,508.0 29.8 14,826.5 18,428.6 26.5
ABV (|) 534.1 596.9 709.6 897.4 - 1,087.6 1,338.5 -
P/E 67.6 82.2 51.8 31.0 - 25.2 20.3 -
P/ABV 11.3 10.1 8.5 6.7 - 5.6 4.5 -
RoA 2.8 2.3 3.7 4.9 - 4.8 4.8 -
RoE 20.2 12.8 17.5 23.9 - 23.9 23.5 -
Source: Company, ICICI Direct Research

Variance Table

  Q4FY23 Q4FY23E Q4FY22 YoY (%) Q3FY23 QoQ (%)   Comments
NII 7,768 7,572 6,064 28.1 7,433 4.5   NIM stable inspite of rise in cost of funds, NII grew better than expected with 29% loan growth)
Other Income 4 3 4 -4.3 2 115.2    
                 
Staff cost 1,341 1,306 1,020 31.5 1,286 4.3    
Other Operating Expenses 1,311 1,316 1,080 21.4 1,296 1.2   Opex to NII largely improved to 34.1%
Opex to NII(%) 34.1 34.6 34.6 -1.4 34.7 -1.7    
PPP 5,119 4,953 3,967 29.0 4,853 5.5    
Provision 859 883 702 22.5 841 2.2   Management expect loan lossesprovisions contained and GNPA and NNPA ratios at 1.4-1.7% and 0.4-0.7% respectively
PBT 4,260 4,070 3,265 30.4 4,012 6.2    
Tax Outgo 1,103 1,038 846 30.4 1,039 6.2    
PAT 3,156 3,032 2,420 30.4 2,973 6.2   Healthy topline and steady opex aided PAT
                 
Key Metrics                
GNPA 2,313 2,714 3,133 -26.2 2,610 -11.4   Lowest ever NNPA ratio at 34bps
NNPA 837 971 1,315 -36.3 934 -10.4  
AUM 2,47,379 2,47,350 1,97,452 25.3 2,30,842 7.2   Healthy growth driven by consumer B2C (10% QoQ surge), SME and Mortgages sector. 

 

Q3FY23 Earnings Conference Call Highlights

  • AUM growth guidance of 25-27% maintained. For FY24, 28-29% growth is expected
  • Some level of moderation in profitability expected to be observed with NIM moderation of about 40 bps but net impact on RoA and RoE should be low
  • Total 40-45% of B2B disbursements were made digitally
  • The company added 19 locations in Q4FY23 and 229 locations in FY23
  • The company added 3.1 million customers in Q4FY23 and 11 million customers in FY23. It aims to add 11-12 million customers in FY24
  • The app platform has 35.5 million gross users and all products/services will simultaneously go live on the app and website
  • In Q1FY24, Bajaj Pay Wallet will also become available on checkout page of payment gateway providers. The company accelerated merchant QR deployment in Q4. In Q4, Bajaj Finance deployed 413,000 merchant QR. Overall, QR deployed was at 627,000 as of March 31, 2023. The company plans to deploy 2.1-2.4 million merchant QRs in FY24
  • The company is building its own open architecture two-wheeler financing segment to be launched in June 2023
  • Opex to NIM is expected to be below 34 for FY24
  • Over the next three years, AUM will come from existing product portfolio with no material change in product mix for the next three years
  • The company significantly increased its physical acquisition of customers and is closely looking at capacity planning
  • With respect to expected guidelines on penal charges and interest on penal interest by the RBI, the management said they do not capitalise charges on loan accounts of the customers
  • Dividend of |30/share declared inn Q4FY23

 

Consolidated AUM break-up

₹ crore  Dec21  Mar22  Jun22  Sept22  Dec22 Mar23
Auto Finance Business 10620 10194 9962 10160 11786 12979
consumer b2b Sales Finance Business 14920 14977 16475 16259 16712 17627
consumer B2C Business 36344 38772 41207 44072 46733 50108
Rural Sales Finance Business 3993 4129 4564 4329 4684 4803
Rural B2C Business 14311 15301 16740 17908 18458 19457
SME Lending Business 23153 24979 26564 28881 30880 33765
Securities Lending Business+IPO 9127 21266 10801 12287 13257 15093
Commercial Lending Business 10478 11498 12040 13378 14848 15834
Mortgages 58304 61701 65665 71092 73484 77713
Total 181250 197452 204018 218366 230842 247379

Disclaimer

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I/We, Kajal Gandhi, CA, Vishal Narnolia, MBA and Pravin Mule, MBA, M.com, Research Analysts Research Analysts, authors and the names subscribed to this report, hereby certify that all of the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect our views about the subject issuer(s) or securities. We also certify that no part of our compensation was, is, or will be directly or indirectly related to the specific recommendation(s) or view(s) in this report. It is also confirmed that above mentioned Analysts of this report have not received any compensation from the companies mentioned in the report in the preceding twelve months and do not serve as an officer, director or employee of the companies mentioned in the report.

 

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