Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s name disappears from Lupin’s shareholding pattern – what investors should know

Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has apparently trimmed his stake below one per cent or has completely come out of the pharma major Lupin.  The company released a shareholding pattern on Wednesday, which doesn’t mention Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s name in it.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who is also termed as the Big Bull of the Indian stock market, held a 1.6 per cent stake in the company and had been holding around the same percentage for the last eight quarters.

Lupin was one of the favourite stocks of the Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who along with his wife and associates hold publicly as many as 39 stocks with a net worth of over Rs 25,513.8 crore, according to trendlyne.com.

The market analysts mostly bank on the reason of the celebrity investor trimming his stake due to the stock being an underperformer for quite some time. The counter has declined by around 9 per cent in the last one year as compared to a 49.5 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex.

TradeSwift’s Director Sandeep Jain says, "Almost all parameters of Lupin are weak including growth numbers, quarterly results, even the fundamentals aren’t attractive and the balance sheet is disappointing."

Similarly, Dolat Capital’s Head of Research Amit Khurana says, "Lupin has been an underperformer for quite some time now with respect to both benchmark indices and also pharma index."

“The overall pharma sector is anyway not doing well, mainly because of raw material costs and US Food and Drug Administration having a negative view towards foreign pharma firms. The sector indeed good well last year amid covid, but the segment had ben corona specific now," he added.

The shares of Lupin on Wednesday ended flat with negative bias down 0.26 per cent to Rs 963.5 per share on the BSE, as compared to a 0.75 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex at the market close.