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India Infoline has ruled out total exit from its retail brokerage business, although it has scaled it down. It will, instead, focus more on advisory services apart from its non-banking finance business.
Several brokerage firms have either wound up or scaled down their businesses in recent months, as ways of trading in equities have undergone changes and the total commission pool has shrunk.
“Today, our retail brokerage business is just 10 per cent of our total revenues, down from 70 per cent five years ago. While we will be focussing more on advisory than execution, we will not totally wind up this unit,” said R. Venkataraman, MD, who also holds a 7 per cent stake in the company.
India Infoline is aiming to transform itself into a multi-product non-banking finance company, having already applied for a banking licence. While at the moment it will not be very aggressive on the commercial vehicles sector, its thrust is on home loans.
“Our book size in the home loan segment is about Rs 700-800 crore. Today, the average size of our home loans is between Rs 40 lakh and Rs 50 lakh, but this will become less than Rs 25 lakh each as we move to smaller cities and towns,” he told media persons here on Saturday.
As part of this strategy, its subsidiary India Infoline Housing Finance Ltd is, for the first time, raising Rs 500 crore through a non-convertible debenture issue, which opens on December 12.
Market outlook Venkataraman was of the opinion that markets will look better in the next fiscal. “The worst is behind us” in terms of macro economics, he said, adding that the US economy is getting back on track. Moreover, a newly elected government will be more decisive, boosting market sentiments.
“My view is that the Sensex will climb about 15 per cent from existing levels of 21,000 to reach somewhere in the neighbourhood of 23,000 during 2014-15,” he said.
His selections of stocks are those that have strong export businesses, such as IT and pharma companies, in the light of the weaker rupee, and those that are linked to the rural economy, like agriculture and rural infrastructure firms.
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