From HEG, Graphite India to Titan, 19 stocks that doubled investors wealth in 2018

The Sensex and the Nifty may have given 12-13% return in fiscal 2018, but when it comes to wealth creation individuals stocks have done a lot better. There are as many as 19 stocks in the BSE 500 index that have doubled your wealth in last 12 months. The best-performing stock has delivered a mind-blowing 1,300%, followed by another that shot up by 550%.

Do you own HEG Ltd. or Graphite India shares? A sum of Rs 1 lakh invested in HEG has skyrocketed to become Rs 14.5 lakh in just twelve months. In Graphite India, just Rs 50,000 invested would have become Rs 3.25 lakh or a little over six times. Clearly, investors in graphite linked firms hit the jackpot. Higher thrust on electric vehicles in China is also driving more demand for graphite electrodes.

Prateek Jain, director, Hem Securities, said, "HEG and Graphite India gained significantly last year as around 21% of the capacity of the graphite industry was shut down in last four years. Further, reports that China has embarked on its drive to shut down polluting steel plants and thereby increasing demand for electric arc furnace players. Electric arc furnace use 2 kg of graphite to produce 1 tonne of steel. This mismatch in demand and supply led to increase in prices of graphite electrode from $450/tonne to more than $8000/tonne. HEG has 10% of the total global capacity of graphite, making it the fifth largest player in the world. A similar spike was seen last year in Graphite India."

Though the BSE 500 stock index itself delivered 13.6% gain in fiscal 2018, the magnitude of gains in the top performers has been incredible. Put together, 19 stocks of BSE 500 have gained 100% or more. The multi-bagger list includes Rain Industries (266.5%), Bombay Dyeing (173.7%), Radico Khaitan (168.4%), and Polaris Consulting (167%) -- all of the stocks delivered in excess of 150%. "Polaris Consulting has done well and sustained at higher levels because of the higher price being paid by the parent company for delisting," said Rusmik Oza, head-midcaps at Kotak Securities.

There are eight stocks that gained between 110% and 150% and these include Sterlite Technologies (148%), Gravita India (145.8%), GVK Power & Infra (135%), Sunteck Realty (127.6%), Indiabulls Real Estate (116.8%), Puravankara (113.8%), Prakash Industries (112.1%) and Jubilant Foodworks (111.9%). The rest of the double-wealth club are Titan, Himachal Futuristic, NIIT Technologies, KEC International and Chambal Fertilisers.

"Jubilant Foodworks has moved up on account for the sustained recovery in same-store sales growth. KEC International has done well because of the consistent order wins in the transmission tower business. Also, a healthy outlook of ordering in the railway segment has helped the stock to outperform," Oza said.

There are quite a few real estate stocks in the list that doubled investor wealth. Experts feel that while these shares were severely impacted between the period of demonetisation and GST and RERA implementation, the implementation of the real estate legislation has been smooth and investors have realised that larger organized players will be able to garner more market share in future. This coupled with the government’s thrust on affordable housing has led to a late outperformance of real estate stocks in fiscal 2018. The beaten down levels of last year (fiscal 2017) has also helped them report more than 100% return in fiscal 2018, Oza said.

As many as 43 stocks, including Britannia, Voltas, 3M India and Future Consumer have clocked between 50% and 100%. The shares of another 50-odd companies gained between 35% and 50% in the BSE 500. This list includes Redington India, DLF, Raymond, Delta Corp, Trent, Cyient, Magma Fincorp, Sundaram Fasteners and Elecon Engineering.

THE SENSEX CLUB

In the 30-share Sensex, the list of fiscal 2018 big gainers starts with Hindustan Unilever that notched up nearly 49% gains. It is followed by Maruti Suzuki (47.8%), Reliance Industries (41%), HDFC Bank (34.3%), L&T (26.8%), Tata Steel (25.5%) and HDFC (23.9%) in the club of Sensex stocks that delivered at least 20% returns. There are eight stocks, including Infosys, Wipro, M&M, Bharti Airtel and TCS, in the 10-20% returns bracket. Four Sensex stocks Axis Bank, NTPC, Hero MotorCorp, and Asian Paints delivered between 4% and 10% in fiscal 2018.

By Kumar Shankar Roy

Source: DNA Money