The Tulip Telecom stock has crashed even as Nomura held out ‘Buy’ and ‘Hold’ recommendations. This shows how analysts can go completely wrong if they allow themselves to be misled by the company they track

Brokerages and research institutions, especially those dealing with the securities market, are expected to do a thorough research before providing any recommendation on any company. However, here is one case where it seems that instead of doing independent research, the analysts remained dependent on the company for inputs which they were tracking.

Nomura Equity Research, in its latest recommendation has suspended rating of Tulip Telecom from neutral on delays in foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCB) redemption, weak operational trends and data centre utilisations. On 17 May 2012, Nomura rated Tulip Telecom as neutral with a target price of Rs90, when the company shares were trading at Rs76.70. Thereafter, Tulip shares rebounded for a few months. On 6 July 2012, Tulip recorded its 52-week high of Rs129. Since then Tulip shares are on a freefall and today touched a 52-week low of Rs11.50, thus hitting the circuit limits.

The stock has crashed 93% from 3 December 2010 when Nomura rated Tulip as ‘Buy’ with a target price of Rs230, against a closing price of Rs178.15. Even on 10 February 2012, Nomura had a target price of Rs150 for Tulip when the closing price was Rs110.30. On both instances, the company share price, however nosedived, thus raising a big question on the research and recommendation process of an elite, foreign broking house like Nomura.

Tulip shares have been falling since 3 December 2010, when Nomura rated it as ‘Buy’. The freefall continued even as Nomura changed its target price for Tulip on 10 February 2012. So, what went wrong in the recommendations?

While suspending Tulip from ‘neutral’, Nomura said, "The (Tulip) stock is down by around 70% in the past three months and our long-term thesis on it being able to capitalise on its network investments has been impacted by delays in meeting its debt repayments and high cash flow needs. In addition, weak customer demand, and its execution missteps have also clouded the outlook and investor confidence.”

In the December 2012 quarter, the company reported a net loss of Rs85 crore compared with a net profit of Rs77.25 crore, same period last year. During the quarter, its total revenues fell 23% to Rs528.67 crore from Rs686.59 crore in the year-ago period.

As of December 2012, Tulip Telecom had a debt of about Rs2,700 crore which includes Rs780 crore in FCCBs, Rs600 crore worth of term loans, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of Rs545 crore and external commercial borrowings (ECBs) of around Rs340 crore.

Last year in February, Forbes India published a highly upbeat story on Tulip Telecom saying that though the company's bets appear audacious, in reality, they are often conservative and textbook examples of expansion. "...unlike most of his (Col HS Bedi (retd), the CMD of Tulip) peers who invest billions of dollars in pursuit of often ephemeral markets, Bedi prefers to line up customers for Tulip's services before incurring the capital expenditure for the underlying infrastructure," the article said.

"...instead of spending serious money laying inter-city (between cities) fibre-optic, it cannily chose to lease that capacity from other operators thanks to the glut in supply there. In contrast, intra-city fibre is usually in short-supply. As a result of these moves, Tulip has been able to increase its addressable market tenfold from Rs1,400 crore to Rs14,000 crore within just 3-4 years," Forbes India had said.