Hexaware Technologies
Cluster: Ugly Duckling
Recommendation: Buy
Price target: Rs220
Current market price: Rs159
Growth at attractive valuations
Key points
- Strong presence in niche areas: Hexaware Technologies Ltd (HTL) is a mid-cap company with a differentiated strategy of focusing on the fast-growing niche areas of enterprise package implementation and HR IT services. It has dominant share in the PeopleSoft implementation market and is growing its presence in Oracle and SAP space. Even in terms of verticals, it is focused on three key industry domains—transportation, BSFI and manufacturing—that account for over 95% of its revenues.
- Better mining of clients by expanding portfolio of service offerings: HTL is using a combination of organic and inorganic initiatives to expand its portfolio of service offerings that would enable it to enhance the share of business from its existing clients. One such initiative has been to build capabilities in the fast growing testing and quality assurance service practice, by developing manual testing services in-house and gaining a foothold in automated testing solution and consulting business through acquisition of US-based FocusFrame Inc. HTL aims to scale up the revenues from this practice to over $100 million per year in the next three years.
- Strong growth visibility with sustainable margins: The strong order book position of $250 million (of this $170 million is executable in CY2007), improving range of service offerings and a growing support for PeopleSoft by Oracle are some of the key drivers of the significant improvement in HTL's revenue growth visibility. Moreover, it has a number of levers to cushion it against the severe cost pressures and is expected to maintain its OPM in a narrow band of 15.5-16% over the next two years.
- Attractive valuations: The consolidated revenues and earnings are estimated to grow at a healthy rate of 31.6% and 28.5% respectively but the same is not reflected in the stock's prevailing valuations of 14.2x CY2007E and 11.2x CY2008E earnings. We recommend Buy on HTL with a price target of Rs220.