Brokerage Views: Motilal Oswal, Citi On LIC, Nuvama On Natco Pharma And More

Brokerages from Citi to Nuvama and Motilal Oswal have companies like Life Insurance Corp., Natco Pharma Ltd., Oil India Ltd., and Sumitomo Chemical India Ltd. on their radar following the release of these companies' fourth-quarter results.

NDTV Profit tracks what the brokerages are putting out on specific stocks. Here are all the top calls from the brokerages that you need to know about on Wednesday.

Nuvama On Natco Pharma

Nuvama maintained its 'buy' call and raised the target price to Rs 1200 per share from Rs 1,055 apiece earlier, implying an upside of 16% from the previous close.
Adjusted revenue and profit after tax beat their estimates by 2% and 10%, respectively, led by higher gRevlimid and RoW markets.
India formulations were muted.
Agrochem, too, was hurt by the poor crop season.
The US pipeline is promising, and international markets are in focus for the company.
Selectively looking for opportunities and eyeing long-term play.

Emkay On Oil India

Emkay maintained its 'buy' call on Oil India with a target price of Rs 800 per share, implying a 22% upside from the previous close.
Pipeline connectivity in the Northeast is needed to support gas production growth.
Management is hopeful of premium pricing applicable to incremental gas.
Numaligarh Refinery Ltd. expansion on schedule, to be completed without any cost overrun.
The Rs 7200 crore Petchem capex expected to start from July 2024 for 3 years at NRL.

Motilal Oswal On Oil India

The brokerage maintained a 'buy' on Oil India with a target price of Rs 775 apiece, implying a 19% upside from the previous close.
Oil production is expected to ramp up to 4 million metric tonnes in FY26.
Gas production is likely to be 5 billion cubic metres by FY26.
The Numaligarh refinery is slated to start in December 2025.
The brokerage believes most of the valuation re-rating upside is behind it now.
Volume delivery is key to sustaining outperformance.
Raise production volume assumptions for FY25/FY26 by 2%/3%.

Elara Capital on Sumitomo Chemical

The brokerage rated 'accumulate' with a target price of Rs 472 per share, implying an upside of 5% from the previous close.
Q4 is ahead of estimates on all counts, driven by gross margin expansion.
The company liquidated high-cost inventory in Q2.
Raw material purchases in Q4 at a competitive price may lead to benefits in H1FY25.
Expect a gross margin expansion of 90–100 bps in FY25E.
Topline growth of 3.5% was led by 34% growth in exports.
Expects exports to ramp-up.
FY25 is to be a turnaround year driven by volume growth and margin expansion.

Citi On LIC

Citi maintains its 'buy' call on LIC, but lowered the target price to Rs 1,255 per share from Rs 1,295 apiece earlier. This implies an upside of 24% from the previous close.
The business mix is shifting in favour of non-par segments.
Largely driven by momentum in the individual savings business.
Expect the non-par mix to increase to ~30% by FY2027E.
Expect margins to compress in non-par business to 45% in FY2027E from 61% in FY2024.
Margin compression in individual non-par is led by competitive and pricing pressure.

Motilal Oswal On LIC

The brokerage reiterated its 'buy' call with a target price of Rs 1,270 per share, implying an upside of 25% from the previous close.
New product launches will support growth in the non-par segment.
Expect the VNB margin to improve.
The annual premium equivalent share of the non-Par segment improves.
LIC aspires for a 5-6% business share from the banca channel from 3.4% currently.
Levers in place to maintain its industry-leading position and ramp up growth in the highly profitable product segments.