The Rally that Left Manpasand Behind

Friday, Sept 20th, 2019 will hopefully go down in Indian financial markets as the day the economic boom for the country got re-started. The markets zoomed over 1,900 points or 5.3% for their biggest gain in a decade. The fuse was lit by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman when she announced several economic measures that should help companies. The theory is that by helping companies they will invest and create more jobs which the economy sorely needs.

One company that completely missed this rally was Manpasand. In fact, it fell below Rs. 10 for the first time ever which is also it’s par value or face value.

I’ve been tracking this stock for a couple of years now. And I got to watch it go up and down and so glad I never invested a single Rupee in it.

The company has been around for 30 years and is a Gujarat-based juice manufacturing company. In 2011, it got private equity money from SAIF Partners a well-respected PE fund. (SAIF is a acronym for Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund). Then in early 2015 it started a roadshow to build up enthusiasm for its upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO). You can read the Red Herring prospectus here (PDF) to see how they pitched their offering. What is a Red Herring prospectus? click here.

In mid 2015, Manpasand finally got listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) at Rs. 150 a share. All was good and it looked like another example where PE money helped a company grow and everyone benefitted.

Then in May 2018, the wheels fell off when the auditor on record – Deloitte Haskin & Sells resigned. It’s pretty clear from the above chart where the stock ended after this revelation. The brokerage firm Motilal Oswal quickly issued a statement (PDF) saying it’s recommendation for the stock was “under review”. Let me be clear, when the auditor bails on a company that’s a very clear indicator you need to bail on the stock.

Had you sold when the auditor resigned, then at the worst you would have broken even from it’s IPO price. But, if you held on thinking the auditor resigned because they didn’t like the Gujurati food while auditing the client, then that’s on you.