Market Commentary LIVE | Nifty Slips Below 23,800 | Piyush Pandey Decodes D-Street

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-30

[00:00:09]Hello and a warm welcome to all our viewers on Business Day Television. The markets continue a pace today being the last working day of the week as also the month of May. While indices have flattened out after a spectacular rise in April, the mood and the tenor of the market looks a lot better than what it was say about 3 weeks ago.

[00:00:31]What does the month of June and the remainder of 2026 hold for the last street? To discuss this and a lot more, we are joined by Mr. Piyush Pandey, senior vice president for equity research at Centrum Broking.

[00:00:48]A very warm welcome to you, Piyushji.

[00:00:50]It's always a pleasure to host you.

[00:00:53]Are you sleeping a little easier these days given that mid caps and large caps mid caps and small caps have rallied substantially in the last 3 weeks?

[00:01:04]>> Yeah, I would say sort of like a valuation correction.

[00:01:07]So, they had seen significantly more correction for the last year or so.

[00:01:13]And especially I would say last month or we have seen some relief rally in there especially in the mid cap stocks.

[00:01:20]>> Okay. Uh How are you reading sentiment on the last street at the moment, Piyushji?

[00:01:27]What looks good? What do you think should improve after fourth quarter earnings?

[00:01:35]>> Yeah, I would say earnings for this quarter were reasonably decent.

[00:01:39]And concerns for the market has been the cost of raw materials like say cost inflation.

[00:01:46]And there may be impact from like say rupee depreciation.

[00:01:49]And plus FIIs have been mostly on the selling side.

[00:01:53]So, I would say a reasonably decent quarter but still concerns from like say rising inflation remains.

[00:01:59]>> Mhm.

[00:02:00]That is what I would put it here.

[00:02:03]>> Okay. You are primarily a tracker of IT and telecom.

[00:02:08]Piyush ji, it's been terrible terrible times for IT.

[00:02:13]Not only have charts sort of collapsed, even earnings and guidance from many IT companies have uh been negative for long-term observers of you know stocks like Infosys and TCS.

[00:02:29]What is your own reading at this point of time after fourth quarter results?

[00:02:34]What are the top three IT companies doing according to you to benefit from the AI change that is happening in their industry or maybe doing something on their own apart from AI?

[00:02:49]>> I would say the fourth quarter results for the IT sector we are mostly as per the expectations.

[00:02:54]Uh they met on the revenue estimates.

[00:02:57]But concerns is more on the impact of AI like for example, the revenue deflation impact due to AI. And because of that many of the IT companies have given slightly muted guidance for FY27.

[00:03:09]Uh however, we do feel that uh the negative concerns from AI are slightly overblown uh because there are there have been recent reports that AI is not cheap and it uh costs huge amount of tokens and I say cost in terms of power and cooling cost uh to run these AI models.

[00:03:29]Uh and plus I would say most of these models would get commoditized. And what will ultimately create value is somebody who is in the company which are really helping to implement the AI or the applications on top of this AI models.

[00:03:44]So in a way some of the concerns have slightly come have been eased off for the last few weeks.

[00:03:50]And I would say uh my sense is that uh uh uh IT companies are given the current valuation are better placed compared to what they were like say 2 months ago.

[00:04:02]>> Okay. Uh Ooh.

[00:04:05]What have you been telling the institutional clients at Centrum Centrum Broking? Uh those who want to reduce who want to further reduce their uh uh exposure of IT?

[00:04:17]Has uh the software sector move from a over ownership status to maybe evenly owned over the last uh uh 3 months or so?

[00:04:30]>> Uh see, currently we are recommending to be equal weight in the IT sector.

[00:04:34]>> Mhm.

[00:04:35]>> Because I would say that uh even over even I would say with so much of news flow regarding Anthropic and OpenAI, uh IT stocks IT index have been broadly stable over the last 2 months. And we have seen some strong rallies in stocks like say Coforge, uh which have been one of my say top picks over the last uh year or so.

[00:04:55]Uh and plus uh especially if one look at the large caps like say then Infosys better placed.

[00:05:02]Uh So, I would say index is broadly stable, but there are some stock specific rally uh which one can look at. And I would say that uh in the IT index like over the last 3-4 months, the correction has been mostly on account of narrative like uh IT companies are under invested and so it's sort of like narrative uh than the actual earnings. It's more of narrative than the actual earnings.

[00:05:29]And my sense is that uh uh as we proceed over the next few months uh uh things should incrementally get better for the entire IT company. So, I would say a worst is mostly behind and even the investor would gradually realize that the value these companies offer to the clients is something which cannot be easily replicated by AI.

[00:05:54]>> When you look at the mid-cap IT space, Piyush ji, is it a cause of comfort for you? Or, you know, stocks like Oracle doing immensely well. Uh, stocks like, maybe to some extent, Coforge and Persistent able to withstand that downfall with some kind of, you know, poise and equanimity.

[00:06:21]Is mid-cap IT looking good to you or no?

[00:06:25]>> Yeah, of course. See, I would say a tier-two IT companies like, say, Coforge and Persistent uh, because of their, like say, uh, say, headcount, say, around, say, 30, 40,000 employees. So, it it would be slightly easier for them to pivot to the AI age compared to, like say, some of the larger names which have lakhs of employees.

[00:06:44]Uh, uh, so, one need to understand that uh, there is going to be shift in the method of delivery. Plus, you have to train your employees to the new age of skills.

[00:06:56]So, of course, some of these names, like say, Coforge and Persistent, you have an advantage to easily shift uh, or make a easy shift, a relatively easy shift to the age of AI compared to the companies which have, like say, a couple of lakhs employees, yeah.

[00:07:13]>> Okay. Okay. At the same time when IT is undergoing tremendous stress, Piyush ji, you are also a tracker of telecom.

[00:07:22]Uh, which has been, uh, on a very sharp uptrend, mainly because it's a domestically oriented sector, and it's a very cozy duopoly in the market. Uh, how are you observing this very sharp uptick that is happening on the stock of Vodafone? Is uh, are the long-term prospects of Vodafone's balance sheet improving?

[00:07:46]>> See for Vodafone especially after this AGR relief, their debt has come down by almost 50 foreign crores. So obviously a big relief on the debt front. And that is something which led to this rally in the Vodafone Idea stock.

[00:07:58]Uh having said that I would say that telecom is primarily a three-player market.

[00:08:04]It's a three-player market, a growing market uh where we have seen regular tariff increase. So obviously even third player would like to capitalize on the opportunity. And where we see that Vodafone Idea is getting aggressive with its capex program over the next two three years.

[00:08:22]So my sense is that government even even the government wants to have a three plus one players picture.

[00:08:27]Uh so with Vodafone Idea doing capex uh and we have seen over the last two three months it's uh Vodafone has started adding customers from losing customers.

[00:08:37]So with consistently not the customers plus relief on the debt front and uh and their 5G expansion to more than say 80 cities I think things have definitely turned the corner.

[00:08:53]And now it depends on like say uh the uh see whether they can gain market share.

[00:09:00]That would be challenging but uh they have added customers and I would say in a three-player market uh they stand to capture some value from the telecom market.

[00:09:11]>> Okay.

[00:09:12]Uh a view that you might have on telecom telecom telecom equipment makers like uh Tejas Networks, like Valiant Communications.

[00:09:21]What is the uh equipment market looking to you?

[00:09:28]>> See I would say in the case of telecom equipment market I would say I would move with the more with like say uh makers of optical fibers.

[00:09:38]Say for example like uh Sterlite or HFCL.

[00:09:43]These optical fibers they are seeing good demand from data centers 5G fiber and say fixed broadband.

[00:09:52]So that is a play one one can I look into especially when you see that India is going to significantly ramp up its data center capacity and plus because of see primarily because of growth in AI now. Which actually only depends on these data centers.

[00:10:09]That can be one way to play.

[00:10:12]Apart from that other equipment makers generally they tend to have a big selling city.

[00:10:21]So fiber go with the fiber player here.

[00:10:25]>> Mhm mhm. We'll call it time here Mr. Pandey. As always it's such a pleasure listening to your views on domestic IT. Thank you for speaking to us and here's wishing you all the best for the remainder of 2026. Have a nice day sir.

[00:10:42]That ladies and gentlemen was Mr. Piyush Pandey. He's a very well known analyst for the IT and telecom space at Centrum Broking. Thank you for watching.