Apart from growth, this enhanced market share provided a cushion against lock-downs, lowering demand during the pandemic, says Varun Manmohan Kapur.
This thesis is visible in the outsized returns over the last one year (during which there were 2 lock-downs) generated by these large private players with high market shares in their respective business segments (equity returns mentioned below exclude dividends):
Bajaj Finance – 95%
L&T – 79%
Asian Paints – 74%
Pidilite Industries – 71%
Titan Industries – 63%
Now market share is sticky, owing to the number of intermediaries involved and the ‘trust’ factor, once created gets difficult to displace in the short term. So large caps with large market shares in their segment’s pre-pandemic are expected to yield the benefits of such enhanced market share over the medium term. Certainty of cash flows, vendor payments, debt servicing, employee retention will all play to their benefit. These outsized market shares owing to the pandemic can throw off conventional valuation matrices like P/E, EV/EBITDA as ‘growth’ (despite their already large base) is expected to be high and disproportionate to levels of economic recovery over the medium term.
