The stock of Asian Oilfield Services (AOS)has seen an almost nine-fold increase in thepast one-year and has outperformed thebroader Sensex during the same period.

The company provides seismic servicesto oil and gas exploration & production(E&P) companies including seismic data ac-quisition, processing, and interpretationand short hole drilling services.

Demand for seismic services depends onthe E&P spending of most upstream oil com-panies.

The current robust de-mand for oil and depleting oilreserves in India call for anincrease in E&P spends by oilcompanies.

What also augurs well isthat the scope of applicationfor seismic surveys has alsowidened due to technologicaladvancements, thus fuellingdemand.

This means that AOS iscurrently sitting in an at-tractive position in the space.With E&P support serviceslikely to grow by 50% every year going for-ward, the company is sure to benefit. The In-dian seismic surveys market has a potentialof Rs 8,000 crore over the next five years.

The New Exploration Licensing Policy(NELP) VII is expected to auction 57 explo-ration blocks.

AOS is likely to bid as part of the consor-tium for some oil blocks and has good possi-bilities of winning some oil blocks. NELPwas formed in 2000 to accelerate the pace ofhydrocarbon exploration in India and didwell in the first six rounds.

The company has recently raised anamount of Rs 50 crore and is looking at ex-panding via the inorganic route.

It plans to acquire 1-2 companies in 2008for around Rs 10 crore each. In the next three

years, AOS intends to deriveat least 30% of its revenuesfrom the international mar-kets.

Currently, AOS operatesonly 2 seismic crews and hasplanned a capex of Rs 35crore for additional 3 seis-mic crews.

Analysts maintain thatthe company expects to clockrevenues worth Rs 107.5crore in 2009 and Rs 205.7crore in 2010 while net profitis expected to be at Rs 26crore in 2009 and Rs 36.9

crore in 2010.The company’s order book stands at Rs

140 crore, which provides good earnings vis-ibility in the short term. At Rs 317.60, thestock trades at 18.7 times its estimated earn-ings for 2009. Analysts are betting on thestock.

PVR one of India’s leading multiplexchains with 95 screens and capacity to hold24,450 seats has lined up aggressive ramp-up plans.

As part of its overall strategy PVR plansto enter in to new ventures like movie pro-duction and food court.

The company plans to scale up its exist-ing chain of multiplexes to 160 screens byFY09 and add an average of 40 screens an-nually from thereon.

Apart from this PVRplans to go for new proper-ties which enjoy entertain-ment tax exemption.

The geographical concen-tration in the Delhi NCR re-gion is also expected to comedown as PVR spreads in thewest and south of India.

The multiplex chaincatered to more than 14.7million people during FY07and has successfully gaineda foothold in film distribu-tion and exhibition.

This is evident as almost12% of the all-India box office collectioncame from this in calendar 2007.

Now, PVR’s entry into film productionwill complete the value chain from produc-tion to distribution, even as it affordsgreater revenues and margins.

Through a 100 per cent subsidiary calledPVR Pictures (which is already into filmdistribution having distributed over 100

Hollywood and Hindi movies), the company is currently working on sixmovies.

Of this, it has already co-produced therecently released Aamir Khan starrerTaare Zameen Par, while Jaane Tu YaJaane Na will be released by early Febru-ary 2008.

PVR plans 7-10 movies releases eachyear. The budget allocation per movies isexpected be about Rs 10-30 crore.

The funding will be a mixof debt and equity, with alikely role for private equityinvestors.

PVR also has ambitiousplans for its food-court busi-ness for which it recentlyformed a 30% joint venturewith Gayan Enterprises, acompany promoted by AmitBarman, vice-chairman ofDabur. All these initiativeshave the potential to becomevalue propositions for in-vestors.

At the current marketprice of Rs 325.7 the stock is available at32.5 times its annualised earnings forFY08.The stock has good potential to go upby at least 25-30% in the next one year, inthe backdrop of expected revenue and prof-it growth of over 50% and 80%, CAGR, re-spectively, over FY07 and FY10.

Pallavi Pengonda & Ujjval Jauharri

Primed for a push-up

A bigger screenplay

Aug 1, 07 Dec 28, 07

Relative showingBase Aug 1, 2007 = 100

Asian Oilfield Services

Asian Oilfield ServicesSensex

55

100

145

190

235

280

325

Aug 1, 07 Dec 28, 07

Relative showingBase Aug 1, 2007 = 100

PVR

PVRSensex

60

80

100

120

140

160

nsight...I

Jyoti Mukul. New Delhi

With an impressive line up ofprojects for the Eleventh Planperiod, country’s largest pow-er company, NTPC Ltd, hassigned up for Rs 1,000-croreloan with Life Insurance Cor-poration (LIC) along with abond subscription agreementof Rs 1,000 crore.

The proceeds would be usedfor meeting the funding re-quirements of the current fi-nancial year. The moneywould be utilised to financethe company’s capital expen-diture for its power genera-tion projects and other busi-nesses relating to coal mining,renovation, modernisationand liquefied natural gas.

Both the agreements have amaturity period of 11 yearswith repayments spread over

14 half-yearly instalmentscommencing after fourth yearof the loan. The interestrate/coupon is linked to 10-year G-sec rate plus margin.

The proceeds under theseagreements are to be utilisedbefore end of March 2008, saida company communication.Its capital expenditure in var-ious projects for the currentyear was Rs 12,792 crore.

The company is also in ne-gotiations with the Asian De-velopment Bank for $1 billionloan. It has set a target to be-come 50,000 mw company byadding over 22,000 mw duringthe 11th Plan (2007-12), while si-multaneously executing diver-sification plans. This would re-quire an investment of aboutRs 88,000 crore over the five-year period. The Eleventh Plantarget would be achievedthrough a mix of new plantsand acquisitions, especially ofpower stations of state elec-tricity boards and through di-versification of its portfolio.

NTPC had earlier thismonth concluded loan facilityof $380 million under theJapan Bank International Co-operation (JBIC) guarantee.

m_jyoti@dnaindia.net

NTPC securesRs 1,000-crdebt from LIC

Share price on BSENTPC

Dec 28Sep 3, 07

(Rs)

170

192

214

236

258

280

185.35

241.40

2266... Mumbai, Saturday, December 29, 2007corporate

Continued from Page 23

When is dividenddue? Ask your broker

“Though people are asked to startplanning for tax requirements sinceApril, we don’t find people doing it,”Dhulla added.

Investors are easily falling prey tosuch tactics by fund houses without un-derstanding that dividend is their owninvested money.

MFs add to the confusion. A recent an-nouncement advertised the dividend be-ing declared as “doosra” income or oth-er income.

After a scheme gives out dividends,the net asset value of the scheme falls bythe amount of dividend declared.

“People come and ask us which are theschemes likely to give a dividend in 1-2months. They invest Rs 30,000-Rs 35,000and save tax on that amount. They alsoget around Rs 5,000 back as soon as thefund house gives out a dividend. Theycan thus save the amount received as div-idend from being locked in for threeyears,” D’Souza explained.

No other tax-saving option allows in-vestors recovery of money at such a fastrate. Tax-saving funds have a lock-in ofthree years.

The arrangement works well foreverybody. MFs, which get asset man-agement fees and upfront loads, benefit.Investors get some part of their moneyback. The fund distributor collects salescommissions.

Since high dividends bring down thenet asset values of the scheme, it attractsnew investors.

New real estateinvestment avenue

For this, it requires to appoint a prin-cipal valuer, whose job is to value all thereal estate that a REIT scheme has in-vested in.

According to Sebi, this needs to bedone once a year.

The REIT scheme would run on thelines of an exchange traded fund, where-in units are bought and sold on a stockexchange.

“The units of every scheme shall belisted immediately after the date of al-lotment of units and not later than sixweeks from the date of closure of thescheme on each of the stock exchangesas mentioned in the offer document,”Sebi said.

The schemes cannot invest in any as-set other than income-generating real es-tate — so it cannot invest in, say, the

share of DLF Ltd, which is a real estatecompany. But Sebi said a REIT schememay acquire non-income producing as-sets as long as the aggregate value ofsuch real estate does not exceed 20% ofthe total net asset value.

The contours of the REITs as pro-posed by the draft are broadly in thelines of a mutual fund. There will be anRIMC, a real estate investment trust anda sponsor. One crucial addition to themutual fund structure is the position ofa principal valuer.

n_subramanian@dnaindia.net

Temasek clutch buysBharti tower co stake

Also recently, Reliance Communica-tions divested 5% in its tower companyto a group of seven institutional in-vestors. At that point, the equity valua-tion of Reliance Telecom Infrastructure(RTIL), the towerco of Reliance Commu-nications, was $6.75 billion and enter-prise value was $8.25 billion.

Bharti Infratel owns around 20,000sites and holds 42% stake in Indus Tow-ers, the recently announced joint ven-ture between Bharti, Vodafone and Idea,which has over 70,000 sites. “Bharti In-fratel and Indus Towers will provide pas-sive infrastructure services to all wire-less telecom operators in India on a non-discriminatory basis,” Bharti said.“Sharing of passive infrastructure re-sults in capex and opex savings and high-er capital efficiency for all wireless op-erators, enabling quicker roll out of serv-

ices especially in rural areas, thus bene-fiting millions of people across India,”the company added.

According to a study paper from theEnam group, “Players would resort totower sharing for cost and capex sav-ings.” According to industry experts,pooling of telcos’ tower assets is a posi-tive sign for the industry. According to areport prepared by IDFC-SSKI, such amove would “bring sanity to the towerindustry and pre-empt over-supply”.

Industry estimates suggest thataround 4.07 lakh telecom towers are ex-pected in India by 2009-2010 to cater toover 450 million mobile phone users.Currently, there are around 220 millionmobile users in India. Of the 4.07 lakhtowers, 3.59 lakh will be shareable. Theprojection for base transceiver stations(BTS) is 4.8 lakh by 2009-2010. A BTS in-stalled on a telecom tower is referred toas a tenant. Going by the projection forfiscal 2010, there would be a tenancy of1.34 on the shareable towers.

Cost of setting up a tower or a cell sitecosts around Rs 30 lakh, according to in-dustry experts. So, an investment of Rs66,000 crore is required to set up another2.2 lakh towers in India over the nextthree years or so, COAI director generalT V Ramachandran said recently.

Currently in India, there are 1.2 lakhtowers and 1.36 lakh BTSs of differentmobile phone companies. Bharti has thelargest number of towers at around40,000. Each BTS can, on an average,cater to around 1,000 mobile phone sub-scribers.

m_nivedita@dnaindia.net

HDIL plans 5547-acreSEZ in Virar

Sachin Sharma and Akshit Shah, an-alysts with brokerage house EdelweissSecurities, said in their research report:“To support the high estimated demandof power in the SEZ, HDIL also plans toset up a power plant. This will provideuninterrupted power supply to the dif-ferent industries in the SEZ.”

The analysts also said that HDIL plansto import coal that will help them in set-ting up this captive power plant withinthe SEZ. Sources said that the plant willbe used to generate excess power. Theadditional power will be supplied toHDIL’s own projects elsewhere is the city.This will be done in partnership with ex-isting power distributors.

b_tinesh@dnaindia.net