SBI Cards reported their Q4 FY23 earnings this past Friday - our update today highlights three interesting trends from the Q4'23 earnings across OpEx, Credit costs and Funding costs.

The world has dealt with one of the worst periods of inflation over the last 2 years. India too has been tightening interest rates - how has this affected India's economy? Has inflation come down in India? These are some of the questions we've tried to address.

The recent collapses of SVB and Signature bank created massive panic among depositors and investors in the US. In this story, we address what needs to happen for other banks to be forced to book losses on their security portfolios, and what the triggers are and how much cushion US banks have.

Q3'23 earnings, and this quarter, like the last one, has been solid. Net interest margins (NIMs) - the spreads between lending yields and cost of funds - have gone up across the board.

Paytm released their Q3 FY23 results, and the big news was that the company hit EBITDA (pre-ESOP cost) breakeven 3 quarters ahead of guidance! This week's analysis looks at the sustainability of these breakeven levels.

Budget special, but not the traditional coverage on direct tax slabs or with personal finance advice. This week, we're talking about India's financial position - how we earn and where we spend. Also, we highlight two interesting trends - one each on our earnings and our expenditures.

SBI Cards reported their Q3 FY23 earnings on 24th Jan - while it trades at a 7x book value multiple, it is down ~20% over the past year. While the business continues to see deteriorating profitability in Q3, we've unpacked a number of interesting take-aways.

This article highlights 5 interesting takeaways from RBI's 'trends & progress in banking' report. This document is a ~250-pager published by RBI once a year, covering a wide variety of information on the performance of banks and non-banks.

Five-Star Finance listed on the bourses late last month with a 70% subscription. The company is up 10%+ since listing, and is currently valued at ~17K crores - trading at a 4+x multiple on book. We cover 2 aspects of the business that could make or break where the company is headed.

A few days ago, the one-year lock in period on ~86% of outstanding Paytm shares expired - and this has caused the stock to drop to an all-time low. Paytm is down ~70% since its IPO and the company is now worth just Rs 30000 crores.

SBI card reported its Q2FY23 earnings recently - with a borrowing cost of ~5.5%, revenue yields between 35-40% and ROEs between 25-30%, the stock trades at 8-9x book value! With YoY profit growth of 52% & ROE of 24.1%, the business appears to have delivered healthy numbers - but not all is rosy.

Q2 FY23 earnings season is here, and similar to last quarter, banks continue to report strong earnings growth.

Our update this week is an attempt to provide a simplified summary of the 2022 Nobel prize in economic sciences and potential applications to Indian economy.

Indiabulls housing finance limited (IHF), a housing finance company (HFC), is issuing a secured NCD and the issue will run from October 7th - 28th, 2022. IHF also happens to be a listed company on the stock exchanges - and the share price hasn't done very well over the last few years.

However, even if the global economy enters a recession, India is very well positioned. We've done a great job of keeping inflation under control and our GDP is estimated to grow by 7.4% in FY23 (IMF estimates). But it's not just inflation control, there is more to cheer about!

Muthoot and Manappuram are two of the largest gold loan NBFCs in India, with 2/3rds of the NBFC gold loan market covered between them. But things haven't been good in the past year - both company's shares have dropped between 30-40%.

Two Small Finance Banks (SFBs) - Fincare and Utkarsh - filed their DRHPs with SEBI in early August. Both are IPOing since they have to - they are mandated (per RBI guidelines) to go public within 3 years of crossing networth of Rs. 500 crores, and they've both hit this timeline.

Digit, a 5-year old insurtech startup, filed its DRHP a couple of weeks ago. While we don't know the IPO valuations yet, the company is likely to value itself at a premium to its recent fund raise valuation of $4-5B. Will Digit's IPO be reasonably priced?

Key highlights from Bank Q1 FY23 earnings - most banks reported strong net profit growth aided by lower provisions. However, several saw a contraction in their PPOP and some banks are taking a bet on unsecured retail.

Sandeep Puri, our resident guest author dissects the Indian IT sector's Q1 earnings and also makes an interesting assessment of where the sector might be headed.

SBI Cards released their Q1 FY23 results this week, and their performance was nothing short of outstanding - 100+% YoY profit growth at 30+% post tax ROE. BOB cards has a similar structure as SBI cards, but interestingly, they aren't doing nearly as well as SBI cards. Read this to find out why.

The total number of demat accounts in India have more than doubled in the last 3 years. Depositories have significantly benefitted from this boom. There are only two depositories in India - CDSL and NSDL.

In March 2022, RBI de-regulated interest rates for NBFC-MFIs. This change puts them on a level playing field with banks, and is great news for NBFC-MFIs.

Our update this week analyses two interesting trends panning out in the MFI space. Bandhan bank might have a role to play in this.

Edelweiss Broking Limited (EBL), the brokerage arm of the Edelweiss group, is tapping into public debt markets to raise 300 crores via an NCD issue. The issue opened on 5th July and is already 1.84x subscribed

Retail lending has significantly increased over the last 10 years, and this has happened at the expense of corporate lending. Our update this week dives into why we think corporate lending might be well positioned to take off over the next few years.

Paytm released its Q4 earnings late last month - the company's 2nd quarterly earnings release since going public in November last year. Paytm ended the year with strong numbers - revenue grew to ~5K crores (YoY growth of 77%).

Our update this week covers Q4 FY22 earnings for SBI cards. Given the entity is the the only publicly listed pure-play credit card player, SBI Card earnings are potentially the best way to get a closer look at the Indian credit cards space.

All 4 listed AMC stocks have under-performed the broader market over the last 2 years. What makes this interesting is the fact that this has happened in a period when overall mutual fund inflows have increased by ~60% and equity fund inflows have almost doubled!

Q4 2022 earnings season is here, and we're back with our quarterly ZCharts earnings dashboards. Most banks have reported strong growth in profitability this quarter - some of the larger banks like Canara, Kotak, ICICI and Axis have delivered YoY profit growth north of 50%!

RBI announced a 'surprise' rate hike this past Wednesday at an unscheduled meeting - key policy rates that were hiked include the repo rate (+40 bps or basis points, 100 bps is 1%) and the cash reserve ratio or CRR (+50 bps).

Aadhar Housing Finance Limited (AHF) - a housing finance company (HFC) - filed an addendum to its DRHP with SEBI earlier this month. AHF is the largest HFC focused on low income housing.

Much has been said about India’s upcoming demographic dividend and how it can make us a powerful player in the global economy. It has also been mentioned ad nauseum that this is a make-or-break opportunity for India.

HDFC Bank and HDFC Limited, two of the largest financial entities in India, are merging into one. This merger - subject to regulatory approvals - will create a combined balance sheet of ~25 Trillion rupees – that is equivalent to ~12% of India’s GDP!

The most popular way of hedging against recessions is gold. But we'd like to explore a hedging strategy that's even more powerful - it revolves around gold but capitalizes on the fact that demand for gold loans go up during a recession.

Sachin Bansal-promoted Navi Technologies Limited (Navi) filed its DRHP with SEBI on 10th March 2022. Navi (short for Navigate) is building a one-stop-shop financial services company that aims to provide disruptive and seamless digital experiences to its customers

Fedbank Financial Services Limited (Fedfina) is a non-deposit taking, non-banking financial institution (NBFC). The Federal bank-promoted NBFC recently filed their DRHP with Sebi, and is looking to raise Rs. 900 Crores.

The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. First the co-location scam, which de-railed NSE's 2016 IPO filing with SEBI; and now a scam involving a CEO and an unnamed Himalayan Yogi - bizarre to say the least.

Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) recently filed their DRHP with SEBI, as you must've heard with all the coverage on it. LIC is the largest life insurer in India with 65+% market share by total premium. Of the 24 life insurers in India, LIC is the only public player.

A lot is going on in the MF space in India - firstly, MF penetration has massively increased in the last year (most of it driven by equity MFs). Secondly, the profile of the new MF investors is very different.

We've taken a closer look at the SBI Cards Q3 FY2022 earnings - our story makes it pretty clear why theirs is an extremely profitable and resilient business. Let's dive in!

Q3 FY2022 earnings season is here, and we are back with our quarterly ZCharts earnings dashboards that allow you to access financial services earnings in a single place - in a visual, easy to consume format.

Dhani and InCred - two fintech lending companies - are raising debt from the public. Both companies opened an NCD offering (non-convertible debenture, a borrowing instrument) this month - Dhani's offer closed earlier this week (27th Jan), and InCred's issue closes mid-February.

It's been ~2 months since the Paytm IPO - the largest IPO India has ever seen. The company raised 18300 Crores at a $20 billion valuation. Unfortunately, Paytm's share price has been in free fall mode since it IPO'd, leading to some panic and disappointment among investors.

Anand Rathi Wealth Limited IPO'd last month - the company is one of the largest non-bank wealth management solutions providers in India. Post IPO'ing, the company released their first ever quarterly results last week as a publicly listed company. Their Q3 performance was stellar

Happy New Year! We're back post-break with a look at the RBI's annual report on the trends & progress in banking- a 248-pager that was released end of December. While it is impossible to do justice to this mammoth report in a single ZCharts analysis, we've pulled out 4 interesting insights for you.

Our update this week is a lookback at some interesting financial services trends and insights from 2021

In October 2021, monthly credit card spends breached the 1 trillion rupee mark - an unprecedented level representing a 56% YoY increase.

Five-Star Business Finance Limited is a unicorn & a rare one in their space. They aren't popular, despite being backed by marquee names like Matrix, Sequoia, TPG, etc. The DRHP filed earlier this month is touted to be at a $3+Bn valuation. Read on for the MSME opportunity & the Five-Star playbook.

Digital lending fintech startups have seen a massive surge in India over the last several years.

In the last of our four-part earnings series analyses, we close with a look at AMCs (Asset Management Companies) i.e. Mutual Fund houses. While there are 44 AMCs in India, only 4 are publicly listed. Our analysis this week covers three of these - HDFC, UTI and Aditya Birla Sun Life.

This week, we continue with our earnings coverage - with a look at life insurance companies. The financial services sector was unfavorably impacted by the pandemic - banks saw rising losses, higher provisions and lower earnings

We initiated an exhaustive coverage of Q2 financial services earnings starting last week. Our earnings dashboards present all earning highlights in a single place, in a visual and easy to consume format.

Q2 FY2022 earnings season just started and there isn't a easy way to access company earnings in a single place - in a visual, easy to consume format. Sounded to us like a good place for ZCharts to step in! So, here's introducing a one stop-shop for financial services earnings.

While what comes to mind when one hears 'Fintech' is digitalization - this week we look at how digital-ready Bharat really is. Cash usage, while on the decline with the rapid rise of UPI & other payment methods, is still high at an absolute level - 70% of retail transactions in FY20 were in cash!

Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC made its market debut this week, and it made us think of the popular 'Mutual funds sahi hai' advert - given mutual fund penetration in India is not even a fifth the world average, we felt it was an apt question to tackle in our analysis this week

Our analysis this week is a deeper look into Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs) - their origin, how they've evolved, and where we think they're headed. Interestingly, an event earlier this year potentially sets a strong precedent for the future of UCBs. Read on to learn more.

Our update this week covers HDFC Bank - India's largest private sector bank. HDFC Bank has grown their net worth 7X and has consistently delivered exceptional returns over the last decade.

Our update this week focuses on a 1900-page survey conducted by the government of India. This survey, called the All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) is a fairly detailed overview of the state of household finances in India, across assets and liabilities.

Our update this week takes a deeper look into the strategy of a 3 year old private sector bank - IDFC First Bank. Created out of the merger of Capital First and IDFC bank in late 2018, IDFC First bank has been laser focused on building a retail-heavy franchise since day 1.

Our update this week unpacks the profitability of the credit card business. We demonstrate this by delving deeper into SBI Cards - the second largest credit card issuer in India and the only publicly listed business of this kind.

Fino payments bank, one of 6 operational payment banks, filed its DRHP with SEBI earlier this month. This week, we delve deeper into the business model of payment banks & attempt to evaluate their path ahead.

Our update this week is a deep dive into the business model of Small Finance Banks (SFB). These are institutions primarily established with a mandate to focus on financial inclusion. We've attempted to look at how SFBs have fared and whether they have a lucrative model in our analysis this week.

Our update this week is a deep dive into the DRHP of PB Fintech Private Limited, the company that runs two of the largest market places for financial products - Policy Bazaar and Paisa Bazaar

Our update this week covers an overview of the insurance industry and a closer look at what makes Digit Insurance stand out.

MobiKwik filed its DRHP with SEBI to raise Rs.1900 Crores via an initial public offering. This week, we look at what one can learn from MobiKwik's DRHP about their business model, and about the economics of a payments-first business model.

This week's update covers an overview of the MFI space and why we think it's an interesting opportunity for Banks.

This week's update is on fintech lenders - their strategic focus & where we think they might be headed. This analysis uses data published from SIDBI/ Equifax reports & may not be representative of the whole Fintech ecosystem. We found the findings interesting and wanted to share it with our readers.

This week's update covers gold loans - it's rise during the pandemic and why they are a very lucrative business

This week we take a look at the expansion strategy of banks across regions in India.

This week's update is a deep dive into education loans. Education loan outstandings have been shrinking - but why?

This week's update is the second of the 2-part series on cards we initiated last week. As part of this week's update we've covered an overview of the key players in the credit card industry.

In this week's update, we've explored the impact of the pandemic on consumer card usage.

Our update this week dives into 3 digital trends from FY21, read on.

This week, we look at lending by geography in India.

This week, we deep dive into the effectiveness of various debt recovery channels.

This week, we take a look at the digital payment study published by RBI.