Idealist: Connecting the Dot (8 Aug) - Case Study & PCB Materials

Aug 8

21 min read

Updated: Sep 25

Disclaimer: This is not a buy or sell recommendation. I’m not a SEBI-registered investment advisor, and nothing shared here should be taken as financial advice. This content is purely for educational and informational purposes. I’m not affiliated with SEBI or any brokerage, nor am I trying to promote or sell anything. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.

Note: You can get 15% off on StockScans by using the code NORMALGUY. Personally, I use it. I partnered with them, so I'm not exactly recommending anything to you, but it's essential if you're an active investor. Screener is good too, but it has some limitations. Here, you get a lot of extra perks, and as an investor, you'll appreciate it.

Note -These Below screenshots come from the Intelligence I share with you every day except Saturday :)

Idealist

A few big IPOs in the US and China are sucking liquidity out of the market. At the same time, China is making breakthroughs in AI and AI hardware, while the global AI boom is increasingly being funded through debt, credit and leverage.

Then add another layer: margin calls, Japan selling US Treasuries, the US reducing exposure to European bonds, and countries trying to protect themselves in an increasingly fragmented financial system.

Amidst all these developments, gold has evolved beyond merely serving as a hedge against inflation. It is now increasingly seen as a hedge against the dollar, alongside critical strategic materials and control over physical chokepoints. This is the primary focus currently. Interestingly, during the ME Crisis, physical gold experienced a correction, prompting Poland, some European nations, and China to resume purchasing it. This shift indicates the changing dynamics of capital movement globally.

We are entering a fragmented world where the supply-chain war has only just started. If you look at markets only through the old framework of US vs India vs ETF and play without understanding these larger forces, you can easily fall into a trap.

The first rule is simple: do not take unnecessary leverage. But at the same time, understand that a meaningful part of the Indian stock market itself behaves almost like a high-leverage zone. A large section of the market is dominated by frequent traders, momentum players and MTF-funded positions. That is why you sometimes see a stock rise 10% in one day simply because momentum suddenly accelerates and everybody rushes into the same trade. And the reverse is equally true: even a genuinely good business can suddenly fall 10% or more because leveraged investors are forced to sell. If the stock not rise they will sell it :)

So whenever you buy a stock, you have to mentally discount this possibility. You should assume that even if the business remains perfectly fine, the stock can fall 10–15% very quickly because of leverage, MTF unwinding, liquidity pressure or margin calls. That risk should already be reflected in the price at which you are willing to enter. This is why buying time matters almost as much as buying the right business. In such a market, valuation matters more again. Business quality is important, but paying any price for quality is dangerous when the system itself has so much leverage and momentum-driven money.

The better framework is: Good business + reasonable valuation + enough margin of safety + correct entry timing. And most importantly, do not emotionally react to every bout of volatility.

When markets suddenly fall because of margin calls or leveraged positions being unwound, the pressure can look much worse than the underlying reality. These episodes often become extremely intense, then gradually saturate as forced selling gets exhausted over the following weeks. So you have to separate business deterioration from financial-market liquidation.

A stock falling does not automatically mean the business has become bad. Sometimes it simply means somebody somewhere was overleveraged and was forced to sell. And this is not only an Indian phenomenon anymore. From Japan to Korea, from the US to India, leverage has become deeply embedded in the financial system. That is why, before buying anything today, you cannot look only at earnings, valuation or the chart.

You also have to think about: Who owns the stock? How much leverage is sitting in the system?Where can margin calls come from? Where is global liquidity moving? Which currencies are being hedged? Who controls critical materials and physical supply chains? And what price gives you enough protection if the market suddenly turns against you?

That, in my view, is the real game of investing in this new fragmented world.

India will invest aggressively in blue water capability, and alongside that there will be investment in railways and in energy - directly or indirectly, from gas pipelines to biogas. So this is multi-dimensional. Some of it will come from the coming government's spending, and private infrastructure capex will continue as well.

But this is going to happen gradually, so one has to factor in YoY growth rather than assume a straight line, because orders will not be continuous. That is why picking a niche play becomes a big issue if it is not cheap. Better to look through proxy elements - those who benefit indirectly from this whole stuff. The Indian economy will grow and capex will continue, and a diversified business is a good way to counter the lumpiness.

India Inc Capex will Continue :)

If EV is growing, it means energy plus the supplier ecosystem grows with it. You have to understand this properly: domestically this is growing faster than it is globally. CDMO will continue, and this is going to double in the next 5 years.

Data centres are inevitable and India will do a good job here but energy storage is the bottleneck, and so is energy production. That is why India will invest consistently in transmission lines this decade. Defence will do a good job too.

So a company that sits in energy + EV + auto + defence or infrastructure - that is what diversification actually means like Motherson, Sansera, Belrise, Sona BLW, Shivalik Bimetal, and so on.

These proxy diversification plays matter, Niche Businesses need extra Caution like HBL, CFF, Avantel, Krishna Defence, Shree Refrigerator etc.,

**Anthropic * Bitdeer**

One thing is sure: with all this, inference becomes cheaper and cheaper, and inference is the most important piece. But for everything to work, the data centre has to be built, and that needs continuous energy. For that, four US companies alone are doing $700 billion plus in capex - just four. Elon Musk is building a terafab, and the EU will do the same.

In India this will be a long game. TCS, Reliance and L&T are doing this in a big way, plus other IT companies are coming into it, and some real estate players too. Overall, the component supplier and the energy proxy is going to stay - the demand is structural.

Whatever is happening globally, companies will get orders. Re-rating is possible due to the Chinese factor, but that can be an opportunity too.

The most important thing I read was Anthropic signing a $10 billion deal, and this is with Bitdeer, who are involved in crypto computing. There are 3 to 4 players involved in it, so this is interesting to understand - what these companies are doing for compute.

They are going to increase compute capacity anyhow, and that matters, because with time users are going up.

And Reliance, Adani and TCS are not dumb - they know if things work out they will earn good money from this. Plus Indian data localisation will be in play, and other rules will come in the future as the AI universe increases. For that, an Indian data centre is not optional.

The first builders will make the money - Aeroflex, Interarch, MTAR and so on, who are involved in this anyhow.

I will focus more on the data centre owners like Airtel's Nxtra, and Sify & STT whose IPO will come soon. Anant Raj is also going into this. AdaniConneX is very focused, along with Reliance and TCS too. If you connect it with the Bitdeer deal, the most secure way is to invest here. I am waiting for the Sify IPO

In the screenshot below, compare Model A vs Model B. Model A will have heavy upfront cost, and that means other proxies will be the big beneficiaries first. Model B is high risk in my view.

The GPU player is not just Nvidia, and every two years a new chip update comes, so this is a high risk zone with depreciation. Plus I feel the data centre the Indian players are building will not be pure play - that will be the hyperscalers in most cases. Even Amazon needs it in a big way in India.

A hyperscaler data centre is different from an AI data centre, but both are important - just look at Amazon's earnings.

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/68939696-be0c-4543-9678-256857a5f43e

The other thing noticeable in the screenshot I shared above is Caterpillar's order book and now you have to connect the dots to see where it connects. AI capex and AI demand are intact, and the bottleneck is compute plus energy. Plus there are protests happening in the Western world too, from people who don't understand that an aluminium plant needs more electricity than this.

The chain is: global OEM / US company → Indian listed company that supplies components to it. You have to look at this dashboard - these companies also supply to global OEMs, and long-term relationships matter here, along with how big the order book is and a lot of other things. So look at this with a pinch of salt, okay.

There are a lot of players here, but most are priced in and in a very overvalued zone - like Azad Engineering and Dynamatic. But you must read Cyient DLM, DEE Development, Motherson and Happy Forgings in more detail.

I will write up on this in more detail soon, but for now these players have good diversification.

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/50ab4813-fef5-43fe-be61-97fd30eb6c93

Bessent talking about the FIMA repo and upsizing it is the real story not Hormuz. If the US starts using the Fed's balance sheet to indirectly defend the yen, it is yield curve control by another name. First it's YCC for Japan, and soon it'll be YCC for the US and the West.

Every major economy is running large deficits, has massive debt, and cannot finance at rising rates. Over half the US deficit is already financed by short-term bills - that is fiscal QE. Gold and silver are holding up despite oil and war because the market knows: rates must come down, one way or another. A lot of things are happening all at once, so gold and silver will shine in the long term, as usual.

And for the US, cheap crude is important. The US has moved away from Middle East crude supply and is leaning on Venezuela now. But you have to keep this in mind - the US is still mostly energy independent, and in a better position than China. Sometimes it feels like the US is god-gifted.

Nykaa is a must-watch. After a long time they have delivered good earnings - the best in 13 quarters but I still feel the stock is overvalued, otherwise I would have bought it. Ather Energy shows you the Indian demand map and how strong it is. Saregama can be a long-term bet if it works. Steel Strips Wheels moving into the value-added segment will probably increase their margins in the coming quarters.

When you read companies, you must understand how they are getting good PAT and EBITDA. Is it coming through sales? Through operating profit? Through less debt and deleveraging? Or through inventory gains? Critical thinking must be important here.

There is negative sentiment in Japan, Korea and the US, and things are broken there. China is now playing actively in AI infrastructure and doing IPOs too, so money is going after China. Due to the heavy sell-off, India is now in an oversold zone. From here, even if 5 to 10% of that money returns, that matters - so take this with the future rate of change in mind.

Defence orders take years to convert into earnings. The stock market usually starts pricing them long before the money shows up. What is different today is that several of the announcements are moving from planned to committed at the same time. That is a change in the quality of the promise, and quality is what the market pays for.

If this works out, just think about it - the Indian supplier gets additional optionality. And given the lucrative deals American and British aerospace makers are putting in front of India, that's why France gone this extend - I feel some deal will happen where aero-defence gets localised and made in India, with a few technology-transfer objectives attached. Let's believe it - Made in India will happen.

This is the wild card. If you choose the right player and think long term, then when they need suppliers, they will call Indian component makers like Azad, Sansera, Aequs, Dynamatic and others.

This is from yesterday's Market Intelligence.

AI data centers and infrastructure capital expenditures are experiencing very high demand due to strong structural needs. This is occurring despite the short-term re-rating happening in China.

Sai Life Sciences is a must-read CDMO player with a robust pipeline across various domains. Over time, they will receive more client calls. Their credibility is strong, and with the new FY27Q1, I feel more positive than ever, even more so than in the past.

https://www.normalguy.co.in/post/the-overlapping-butterfly-effect-of-glp-1-part-2

Gufic

Gufic is a complex injectables company operating across five clusters, each serving a distinct set of doctors and institutions.

Critical care - antibiotics and antifungals for hospitals and ICUs. The largest cluster, at roughly ₹200 crore run-rate.
Fertility and women's health - gonadotropins and related therapies. Strong and still growing.
Sparsh - dual chamber bags for safer IV delivery.
Botulinum toxin - sold as Stunnox, for both aesthetic and therapeutic use.
Nutraceuticals - the smallest piece.

What makes it unusual

Four things set Gufic apart from a typical mid-cap injectables company. It manufactures botulinum toxin fully in-house. Very few Indian companies do this - it is a biological process where holding potency and consistency batch to batch is genuinely hard, and most players import or licence instead.

It spends like a larger company. R&D and regulated-market readiness are being funded at a scale most mid-sized peers defer until they are bigger. That compresses margins today in exchange for optionality later.

It took a deliberate revenue hit to fix its foundation. The critical care business moved from direct hospital billing to a stockist-driven model, costing about ₹22 crore of revenue in the process. Most companies avoid a reset like this precisely because it shows up in the reported numbers before the benefit does.

And Indore delivered on guidance. Management said 30% utilisation and EBITDA breakeven in FY26, margin-accretive from FY27. After the delay, the plant hit both - 30% utilisation, breakeven achieved, with the ramp still ahead of it.

The price-to-sales and price-to-book ratios are slightly high, yet they still seem solid to me. Although this isn't entirely reasonable, the company posted its first positive PAT and increased its margins, which is significant. good catalyst has come into play, so it's essential to read the conference call and recent updates to understand what has changed from the past.

This is important, but while there is debt, there is also cash flow, so caution is necessary.

Shilpa

Management indicates that the period of significant spending is largely complete, and the company is now transitioning into a phase where previous investments are expected to generate increased revenues and widen margins.

How not to miss a stock like Shilpa Medicare

For those who missed Shilpa Medicare - you didn't need to understand the ADC story or what is going on in phase one. You missed the December and March quarters. You didn't look at what actually changed. That is how you miss.

Why waste time reading every company in full? Sometimes just scan. Read the balance sheet and the technical chart. If it looks worth it, then read deeper. If not, move on.

Look at what those two quarters were telling you. Even after heavy expansion spending, PAT was solid and more than doubled. Margins expanded. EPS went up. Interest cost down means deleverage That combination - spending hard and still printing better profit - is the signal.

The long pushback is this: you have to understand what really changed in the business, and see it showing up in the numbers. That is one way into a company. Once you are in, you can read the other balance sheet metrics too. But this is the first stage. Remember it.

This is your homework: you need to investigate what led to this situation. It's not a coincidence or just a momentum play. So, delve into it and discover what caused the change. That's how you learn when you analyze the case study, enabling future scans to be more comprehensive.

PCB materials

AI servers are consuming the world’s best PCB materials. This is creating shortages and higher prices even for ordinary electronics made in India.

India currently imports most copper-clad laminate, or CCL. So Indian PCB and electronics companies cannot easily escape the global shortage by buying locally

The EMS company does not usually manufacture the basic board material. It buys a bare PCB or PCB-related inputs and places electronic components on the board. So CCL is not directly visible to the consumer, but it sits underneath almost every electronic product.

Copper carries electricity and signals. Glass cloth gives the board strength and prevents it from bending or expanding too much. Resin binds everything together and provides insulation. You need all three. Having cheap copper does not help if glass cloth is unavailable. Having glass cloth does not help if the required resin is missing.

This is why the present situation is complicated: multiple raw materials are tight at the same time.

Why did CCL prices suddenly rise?

Copper Clad Laminate (CCL) is the base sheet from which every printed circuit board is made. It is built from three things: copper foil, glass cloth, and resin. Right now all three are in trouble at the same time, and that is why the shortage has become serious.

First, copper turned expensive. Copper reportedly touched around $13,300 per tonne in January 2026. Since copper foil is roughly 42% of the cost of a laminate sheet, any jump in copper price immediately raises the cost of making CCL. But this is only a cost problem, not the real physical wall. You can still buy copper if you are willing to pay. So copper alone does not explain the shortage.

Second, and most important, glass cloth became the real bottleneck. Nitto Boseki (Nittobo) reportedly controls around 90% of the world's T-glass supply. Its plants are already running heavily, and meaningful new capacity is expected only around mid-2027. This is the true chokepoint, because copper and resin can be bought in the open market, but if a factory has not been allocated glass cloth, it simply cannot make the laminate. No cloth, no board.

Third, resin supply tightened. CCL uses specialised resins - epoxy systems and PPE/PPO-based systems. These resins decide how the board behaves: heat resistance, electrical insulation, signal loss, moisture resistance, and reliability when data moves at very high speed. Disruptions at Saudi Arabia's Jubail petrochemical complex reportedly hit PPE resin supply, and epoxy also got tighter. Delivery lead times in parts of the market stretched from about four weeks to around twenty weeks. So even a company that managed to arrange copper and cloth could still be stuck waiting for the right resin.

Fourth, new machines cannot arrive quickly. The obvious answer to a shortage is "build more CCL factories." But a CCL plant cannot run on ordinary machinery. It needs specialised equipment for resin impregnation, drying, lamination, temperature control, pressure control, copper-foil processing, glass-fibre drawing, and quality testing.

Only a limited number of Japanese, German, Chinese and other specialist suppliers build these machines, and lead times can stretch close to two years. This is the part that makes the shortage unusual. Normally, high prices attract new factories and the shortage ends. Here, the machines needed to build those factories are themselves in short supply, so high prices do not create new supply for a long time.

Why AI is the trigger. AI servers need far more advanced boards than normal consumer electronics, and this shows up in two ways.

One is speed: AI networking is moving towards roughly 224 Gbps per lane, and at that speed ordinary board material loses too much signal. So server makers keep shifting up the material grades - M7 to M8 to M9 - each one electrically better but costlier and harder to manufacture. The other is layer count. A normal electronic product uses a fairly simple board, but AI servers stack many layers because they must carry more compute chips, more memory, more power delivery, more networking links, and better heat management.

AI rack motherboards reportedly moved from about 20–28 layers in 2024–25 towards 24–40 layers in 2026–27. Every extra layer means more laminate per board, more copper, more glass cloth, more processing, a higher chance of manufacturing failure, and a more expensive material grade. So AI pulls up both the quantity of CCL needed and the quality of it.

Why this hurts India, even though India barely builds AI servers. This is the key link. Indian electronics companies mostly use ordinary FR-4 laminate for automotive electronics, railway systems, industrial equipment, consumer appliances, telecom gear, power electronics and medical devices. They are not buying M8 or M9 AI-grade material at all. But global CCL makers naturally prefer AI customers, because AI-grade laminate earns them better margins. So they shift production lines away from ordinary FR-4 and towards premium AI material.

The chain runs like this: AI companies demand premium CCL, so CCL makers move capacity to AI grades, so less capacity is left for ordinary FR-4, so FR-4 prices and lead times rise, so Indian PCB manufacturers pay more, so Indian EMS firms have to carry more inventory, and finally working capital, debt and possibly margins get hit.

This is called crowding out. AI companies never touch India's laminate directly. Their demand simply removes ordinary laminate capacity from the market, and India feels it second-hand. The source describes exactly this: plants shifted towards high-margin AI server material, leaving less available for ordinary automotive, industrial and consumer grades.

Finally, the 300% number needs care. The India Printed Circuit Association (IPCA) said CCL prices had risen more than 300% over the previous year, and industry bodies warned that electronics production could face serious disruption without government support.

But the raw-material numbers do not add up to that. Copper foil is up more than 30%, resin up around 70%, and Jushi 7628 glass cloth roughly doubled. Applying the normal cost weights gives an input-cost rise of about 55–60%, not 300%. So the 300% figure most likely reflects panic spot-market deals or a few specific scarce grades, rather than the broad cost of manufacturing.

What this means for Ratnaveer?

Ratnaveer today is mainly a stainless-steel company, not an electronics-material specialist. Its capacity is roughly 32,000 MTPA of stainless-steel finishing sheets, 7,000 MTPA of washers and solar-mounting hooks, and 2,000 MTPA of tubes and pipes - about 41,000 MTPA in total. Now it is stepping into CCL manufacturing.

India imports most of its CCL. So a local producer can offer lower transport cost, shorter delivery time, lower inventory needs for customers, protection from shipping disruptions, easier rupee-based buying, government incentives, and import substitution.

Management is targeting production from November 2026, with a Chinese technology partner and machinery already ordered. It claims roughly a 10–13% cost advantage, a 2% local-purchase subsidy, customer preference for local supply, around ₹750 crore of potential CCL revenue at full scale, and a consolidated revenue target of about ₹2,500 crore in two to three years. If execution works, CCL becomes a serious second business.

But Ratnaveer is not an easy or risk-free winner.

First, it may only make ordinary grades. The real scarcity and the fat premium sit in M8/M9 AI-grade laminate. Ratnaveer will more likely start with standard FR-4, high-Tg FR-4, and less sophisticated industrial grades. That still has import-substitution value, but it may not earn the huge AI-grade margins that the shortage headlines suggest. Ratnaveer benefits from the spillover shortage, not directly from AI laminate.

Second, it must buy the same expensive raw materials as everyone else - copper foil, electronic-grade glass cloth, epoxy and other resins. These are exactly the things in short supply. Established giants like Kingboard and Nan Ya have long supplier relationships, large purchase volumes, better bargaining power, long-term contracts, and in some cases vertical integration.

Ratnaveer is a brand-new buyer walking in during a shortage, and new buyers usually get lower allocation, higher input prices, worse payment terms and heavier working-capital needs. So a high CCL selling price does not automatically mean a high Ratnaveer margin - its raw-material bill may be very high too.

Third, qualification takes time. You cannot sell laminate just because the factory switched on. Customers need proof the material will not fail after heat cycles, moisture exposure, soldering, vibration, long electrical use, and repeated expansion and contraction. That means UL listing, product certification, PCB-manufacturer approval, end-customer qualification, reliability testing and trial orders.

So November 2026 production does not mean November 2026 revenue. Early sales are likely to be small trial orders, low-specification products, lower-margin and price-sensitive business. The announcement that actually matters is not "production started" - it is "a meaningful customer has qualified Ratnaveer's CCL and placed a commercial order."

Fourth, the shortage may ease exactly when Ratnaveer ramps up. Nittobo's new capacity is expected around mid-2027. Kingboard, Jushi and others are adding electronic-grade glass-fibre capacity, and Chinese CCL capacity is expanding too. Ratnaveer may start in late 2026 but then spend months on trials, stabilisation, certification, customer qualification and yield improvement, so large-scale output may only arrive in FY28 - right when global supply loosens.

The long-term import-substitution opportunity can survive, but the temporary shortage windfall may vanish.

Fifth, the base steel business is eating cash. The steel business is growing, but cash conversion is weak: negative operating cash flow in FY26, trade receivables up from about ₹65 crore to ₹175 crore, debt of roughly ₹590 crore as of March 2026, debt-to-equity around 0.67, customer concentration, and no long-term contracts with all major clients.

The rights issue matters here. Of the planned ₹330 crore, about ₹255 crore is reportedly for additional working capital - meaning most of the money is not going into a high-return electronics factory at all. It is funding inventory, receivables, day-to-day growth and cash tied up in operations.

Sixth, CCL is technically a different animal from steel. Ratnaveer's experience is metal processing, stainless finishing, washers, pipes and solar mounts. CCL demands resin chemistry, microscopic uniformity, impregnation control, lamination-pressure control, thickness consistency, electrical testing, clean manufacturing and low defect rates. This is not a normal capacity expansion - it is a new business model and a new technical discipline. The Chinese technology partner reduces some of the risk but does not remove execution risk.

What the shortage means for Syrma?

Today it is mainly a buyer of CCL and PCB material, not a producer. Its Q1 FY27 was strong revenue around ₹1,604 crore (up 67%), EBITDA around ₹176.6 crore (up 72%), EBITDA margin around 11%, and PAT around ₹105.7 crore, more than double. So the shortage had not visibly wrecked its margin at that point.

The pressure is showing up somewhere else 0 the balance sheet. Syrma built up inventory to protect production, and as a result net working-capital days rose from 63 to 71 and short-term borrowings rose by roughly ₹340 crore, with more money trapped in stock.

The cost travels this path: more inventory → more working capital → more short-term borrowing → higher interest expense → possible future cash-flow or margin pressure. So watching only the EBITDA margin can hide the real problem.

Can Syrma pass the cost on? Usually EMS contracts allow some raw-material pass-through, but with a lag. Imagine Syrma takes an order at the old CCL cost, the price rises two months later, Syrma still has to buy expensive inventory, and the customer only accepts revised pricing next quarter - Syrma carries the gap in between. Its order book is around ₹6,770 crore, of which about ₹5,400 crore is expected to execute over the next twelve months, with average execution of roughly 10–10.5 months. Long execution periods raise the chance that raw-material prices move after an order is booked. Management is targeting an EBITDA margin of about 10.5–11%, already allowing for supply-chain pressure - so that band is the line to watch.

Syrma may also become a CCL producer later. It is interested in moving upstream into PCBs, CCL, flexible PCBs, and semiconductor packaging and backend work. But management has said a credible technology partner is essential, and some discussions are not yet firm commitments.

That sets up a shift: today Syrma buys CCL, so the shortage hurts it; later, if Syrma makes some CCL, local integration may help it. New plants need time, money, technology, qualification and scale, so for now CCL inflation is mainly a cost and working-capital issue for Syrma.

Competition is arriving fast

Ratnaveer is not the only one entering. Projects are planned by or linked to Syrma, Wipro, Kaynes Circuits, Amber Group and other ECMS-supported companies. Kaynes Circuits received a large ECMS approval covering multi-layer PCBs, HDI PCBs, camera modules and copper-clad laminates. Syrma is working on PCB capacity with plans involving CCL and flexible PCBs. Amber has approvals relating to electronic-component and PCB manufacturing. Taken together, industry proposals could eventually cover a large part of India's CCL requirement.

That creates two phases. Phase 1 is the shortage: few domestic producers, heavy imports, high prices, long lead times, and first-mover attention for Ratnaveer.

Phase 2 is the risk of domestic overbuilding: Ratnaveer plus Syrma plus Wipro plus Kaynes plus others all adding capacity while the global shortage eases, competition rises, and prices and margins normalise. Being first is useful, but it does not guarantee a lasting monopoly.

Government policy creates a straight conflict

Ratnaveer wants local manufacturing incentives, some protection from imports, customers who prefer domestic CCL, and imported CCL to stay relatively expensive. Indian PCB manufacturers want the exact opposite: cheap CCL, duty-free imports, easy trader imports and lower working-capital pressure. One side says "support local CCL and protect domestic economics"; the other says "make imports cheaper right now so our factories survive."

IPCA has asked the government to allow duty-free imports of critical PCB materials. If that request is accepted, imported CCL gets cheaper - which helps Syrma, Aimtron and the PCB makers today, but can shrink the cost advantage Ratnaveer is counting on when its plant finally starts.

If you read this, you'll notice that many variables are currently at play, and it's difficult to overlook inventory risk. One quarter doesn't provide the full picture; you need to consider how this business will perform over the next 2 or 3 years.

Aimtron is currently very overpriced, while Dixon is somewhat Corrected & P/S look cheap now plus new catalyst. Cyient DLM seems reasonable to me. Review these companies to understand what has changed this quarter and in the past year. It's essential to read about the company with a tick mark :)

Bullish On India

Worried about America, neutral on China, bullish on India - buy Indian equity now, especially midcaps, plus gold.

India structural story

India's GDP grew 10.4x in 30 years vs Dubai's 8.5x
8th largest exporter of goods+services - services exports heading to $400bn with $200bn+ surplus, driven by GCCs (not IT services, which are hurting).
indigenous turbojet, hydrogen train, rare-earth-free motor, C295 aircraft, first private orbital rocket. Defence exports at ₹38,000cr.
Oil intensity down sharply → external vulnerability falling.

Indian equity

FII ownership at decadal low. Over Aug-16 to Jul-26, net FII investment is basically zero, while DIIs put in $300bn. Foreigners have already sold.
India underperformed Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan. At this level of divergence, India historically bottoms and starts outperforming.
Earnings are beating. Nifty50: 13 beats vs 6 misses. Nifty Next 50: 17 beats vs 3 misses. Double-digit earnings growth expected FY27 and FY28.
Valuations: large cap at historical average, midcap 10% premium, small cap 20% premium.
limited downside, reasonable upside. This is time to get invested.
The one cap on upside: $60bn+ IPO pipeline, 100+ IPOs waiting. IPOs mark turning points