Strong presence in niche areas: Hexaware
Technologies Ltd (HTL) is a mid-cap company with a differentiated
strategy of focusing on the fast-growing niche areas of enterprise
package implementation and HR IT services. It has dominant share
in the PeopleSoft implementation market and is growing its
presence in Oracle and SAP space. Even in terms of verticals, it
is focused on three key industry domains—transportation, BSFI and
manufacturing—that account for over 95% of its revenues.
Better mining of clients by expanding
portfolio of service offerings: HTL is using a combination of
organic and inorganic initiatives to expand its portfolio of
service offerings that would enable it to enhance the share of
business from its existing clients. One such initiative has been
to build capabilities in the fast growing testing and quality
assurance service practice, by developing manual testing services
in-house and gaining a foothold in automated testing solution and
consulting business through acquisition of US-based FocusFrame
Inc. HTL aims to scale up the revenues from this practice to over
$100 million per year in the next three years.
Strong growth visibility with sustainable
margins: The strong order book position of $250 million (of
this $170 million is executable in CY2007), improving range of
service offerings and a growing support for PeopleSoft by Oracle
are some of the key drivers of the significant improvement in
HTL's revenue growth visibility. Moreover, it has a number of
levers to cushion it against the severe cost pressures and is
expected to maintain its OPM in a narrow band of 15.5-16% over the
next two years.
Attractive valuations: The consolidated
revenues and earnings are estimated to grow at a healthy rate of
31.6% and 28.5% respectively but the same is not reflected in the
stock's prevailing valuations of 14.2x CY2007E and 11.2x CY2008E
earnings. We recommend Buy on HTL with a price target of Rs220.