ITC stock creates another record, breaks into the elite top-10 club

Going by the market capitalisation of all listed companies on BSE, ‘meme stock’ ITC is now India’s 10th largest company, leaving behind giants and Dalal Street favourites like

, , , and .

At a market cap of Rs 3,63,907 crore on Monday’s closing price, ITC beat Airtel to regain the 10th spot.

ITC also hit a 52-week high of Rs 296.95 and is now within kissing distance of the Rs 300 mark.

A long favourite of both value investors and those with a bias towards high dividend-yielding stocks, ITC is still shunned by ESG funds as it earns around 80 per cent of its profit from cigarettes, which are known to cause cancer.

The Kolkata-based conglomerate is diversified into a number of sectors like hotels, non-cigarette FMCG items, paper, stationery, agriculture and even IT.

Dalal Street’s bullishness on the stock is evident from the fact that out of 30 analysts covering the stock, a vast majority of 21 have strong buy ratings, Trendlyne data shows. Interestingly, none of them has a sell call on ITC.

The highest price target goes up to Rs 351, the data shows.

When the market was in a euphoric stage during the central bank-fuelled bull market in 2020 and 2021, ITC was moving at a snail’s pace. After the Nifty peaked in October last year, ITC shares slowly started getting attention as most quality stocks looked expensive.

Up 35 per cent so far this year, ITC is now among the best-performing Nifty stocks.

“Globally now there is a trend in favour of value stocks. ITC, a classic value stock, has been underperforming due to ESG concerns, particularly since tobacco contributes the bulk of ITC’s bottom line. This underperformance which had no fundamental basis is being corrected now,” said Dr VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at

.

Veteran money manager Rajeev Thakkar is among the largest ITC bull. Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund, managed by him, has an allocation of more than 9 per cent in ITC. It is also his single largest stock bet in the portfolio which has 27 stocks.

Domestic brokerage

said in the June quarter ITC is likely to post strong revenue growth led by a full recovery in cigarette volumes, robust growth in paperboard business, recovery in stationary business & price hikes taken in FMCG business to pass on raw material inflation.

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