Equity.

Research notes

• 30 May 2026

  El Niño 2026: the agriculture and fertiliser thesis, and the trade that survives it

  A two-part note. Part one tests the popular El Niño thesis as a chain (weather to crop prices to farm income to fertiliser demand, plus a war-driven supply squeeze) and finds it weak. The event has not started yet (the Pacific is neutral, about 82 per cent likely by summer), the harvest effect is small and cuts both ways, a poor harvest lifts prices only when stocks are thin, and Indian farm prices are walled off by policy so the demand link partly runs in reverse. The one genuinely strong force, the 2026 fertiliser spike, is a Strait of Hormuz supply shock that is already reversing, not a weather story. Part two builds the trade that does survive: an India-only equity play on listed fertiliser producers, because a weak monsoon there lands in the subsidy bill and producer margins rather than in crop prices. Screened with our own fair value and quality work across seven names, the conclusion is a barbell (a high-quality anchor plus deep-value asymmetry) with a finite shelf life tied to the Kharif season.

• 29 Apr 2026

  Steel, Towers, and a Supercycle

  An equity research note on Transrail Lighting (NSE: TRANSRAILL), BUY at Rs. 598 with a 24-to-36 month target of Rs. 800. Probability-weighted return of +33 percent across bear, base, and bull cases. Three legs support the call: vertical integration into in-house tower fabrication captures 400 basis points of EBITDA margin per contract, India is entering its second power-transmission supercycle that takes the addressable annual market from Rs. 100,000 crore to Rs. 130,000 crore by FY28, and the stock trades at a discount to peers despite leading the group on growth, ROIC, EBITDA margin, and balance sheet leverage. Position sized at 4 percent of portfolio at starter level, 8 percent at full size.