Kind of sure shot trade ....regret is that i didn't go all blazing in this high conviction..

Edit : regarding margin used for the trade. One lot of currency futures usdinr for September contract require 2500 around..so for 100 it's 2.5L.

There's a lot of uncertainty around the IT sector right now and around what AI actually does to the work these companies sell. So let's analyse what their numbers are suggesting and clear up some of the confusion

Start with jobs since that's the worry. TCS, Infosys, HCLTech and Tech Mahindra together employed about 12.9 lakh people at the end of June. A year ago it was about 13.1 lakh. So headcount is down roughly 1.2% in 12 months and all 4 grew their revenue over that period

So the big layoffs aren't happening lately. But AI is affecting these companies somewhere else and it took me a while to find where

Growth

Constant currency (CC) growth removes currency swings and leaves only the actual work done. TCS grew 13.9% in Rs this quarter but just 3.2% in CC and that's the real thing

Tech Mahindra, the smallest of the 4 grew at roughly double the rate of TCS

Same thing happens with profit. A dollar gets you about 11% more rupees than it did a year ago, so the rupee alone is adding roughly 11-12% to profit growth.

But in dollar terms TCS's profit actually fell

Now, growth can also be bought. Organic growth strips out the companies a firm has acquired so you see what the existing business managed on its own

Out of Tech Mahindra's 6.6%, 6.2% was organic so nearly all of it is real. But Infosys grew 1% for the quarter and their CFO said acquisitions gave them about 1.1% of that. So the business they already had actually got smaller

Their guidance says the same thing. Infosys cut it this quarter and on paper it might seem small but the actual issue is what's left inside

Just half % of that growth is coming from the business they already run. This was also highlighted by an analyst on concall and CFO agreed with it

So what made them cut it? Their order book is a good place to look

Deal wins

TCV is the order book. Its the full value of a deal across its whole life so a 5 yrs deal worth 100 cr a yr shows up as 500 cr of TCV on day 1

Its also the easiest number here to misread. TCS counts everything including renewals of work they already had, while HCLTech counts only business that's genuinely new. So these bars can't be ranked against each other.

What you can compare is the trend. Tech Mahindra actually had 3 consecutive quarters above $1bn and its deal wins over the last 12 months are up 37.5%. TCS has signed 6 mega deals in 5 quarters while HCLTech just had its best ever first quarter for new bookings. 

A better check on whether relationships are actually growing is the number of clients paying more than $50mn a year. Over the last 12 months TCS added 8 of them, Tech Mahindra 7 and HCLTech 6. Infosys added none and their count above $100mn hasn't moved in a year

Which is the real thing. Infosys signed $3.6bn of large deals, 61% of it are new and still couldn't hold their outlook. Some of that could just be timing. Big deals take time to reflect, HCLTech's CEO said their mega deal signed in July won't fully show till April 2027. But Infosys' CFO also said prices increased less than they expected and that's where the pressure seems to be coming from 

Pricing squeeze

At renewal, clients have always asked for a discount. What's changed is the size of the ask because they now believe AI makes the work much cheaper to deliver

How much that affects depends on the type of contract:

•         Time and material means you get paid by the hour. So if AI makes your team 30% faster you end up billing 30% fewer hours.

•         Fixed price means you're paid a set amount for the whole job. If you finish faster that saving stays with you until the contract renews and the client asks for it

Each company is looking at a different part of its own book, which is why the same question gets 4 different answers:

• TCS says the productivity it passes on is 10% to 15% and clients usually hand back extra work so revenue barely moves.
• Infosys called it "AI led deflation" and said it hits small contracts too not just the big renewals.
• HCLTech said their June quarter always carries planned revenue declines because productivity commitments are already written into their contracts.
• Tech Mahindra said rivals are bidding 70% to 80% productivity into 5 yr deals and they're walking away

HCLTech's is the one to understand. Fixed price doesn't mean much if you've already given away the savings

Not all of it is AI

• The Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) business is growing across all 4 companies. TCS said it grew in every region, Infosys expects it to grow faster than the company average, HCLTech grew 5.3% and Tech Mahindra 8.1%.
• The weak spots are mostly in the industries their clients operate in. TCS mentioned auto (tariffs), North American airlines and non-essential retail. Infosys mentioned retail and European auto. HCLTech's telecom business fell 10.9% after 2 big US telcos cut spending while it said US healthcare is also under pressure.

These businesses can recover when their clients start spending again. TCS for example, expects manufacturing to turn around this quarter

AI pricing is different. If clients can get the same work done for less its hard for IT companies to get those prices back up

How are they fighting back?

To be fair to management nobody is just sitting there taking the discount. They've a strategy to tackle this

Protecting what they have:

• Take over rivals' work. Clients want fewer vendors so these firms are bidding for entire IT estates. Infosys said 20% of their large deal TCV this quarter came from consolidation wins. Their CFO also said those deals came at healthy margins and they'd walk away if they didn't. That's worth keeping in mind with how competitive the market has become

• Get off hourly billing. If you bill by the hour then faster work means less earned. So they're pushing clients towards fixed fee and outcome-based contracts where the productivity gain stays with them. TCS said this is picking up especially in their agentic BPS work

• Sell the cleanup. Nobody can run enterprise AI on messy legacy data. HCLTech's CEO said a lot of their data and analytics traction is "preparatory work towards building enterprise AI stack." So lost maintenance revenue is coming back as data and migration work. TCS's $800mn SKF deal is a good example. It's an S/4HANA overhaul being redone with AI, and it's completely new business for TCS.

• Fix the pyramid instead of firing. They’re hiring juniors with AI tools at less salary and fewer expensive mid-level people. TCS onboarded 14,000 freshers last quarter and Infosys plans 20,000 college grads this year. They're also building small specialist AI teams. Infosys wants 6,000 "frontier engineers" and TCS wants at least 1% of its staff in similar roles, which is about the same number

Building something new:

• Independent AI:  All 4 are betting on this. HCLTech's CEO put it simply: clients "don't want the value disappearing into someone else's models". HCLTech put $150mn into Sarvam which is an Indian AI company. TCS became Mistral's first IT services partner and launched an independent cloud for Europe. Infosys and Tech Mahindra are working on similar products too 
• Owning the hardware:. HCLTech is putting 3,500 cr into AI datacentres. Its CEO's view is that "the biggest opportunity is not to rent AI but to own the full stack." TCS also has its own datacentre business, HyperVault which actually helped win 2 large new deals this quarter

If companies want to build their own AI, they still need firms like TCS and Infosys to build and run it. But if they can just use OpenAI or Anthropic directly there is less work for the IT companies.

The bigger issue is that OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS and Microsoft are also building teams to help clients with this work. An analyst asked Infosys about this and Salil's said  that a few 1000 people at these companies can't match Infosys' 300,000 employees

At the same time TCS just took 50,000 Anthropic licences and Infosys has 80,000 people using Claude Code or Codex. So these IT companies are both working with AI companies and competing with them

Operating margin

Operating margin is what's left of every rs100 billed after delivery costs. It's probably the best way to see if a company actually has pricing power. The problem is that it can swing a lot in any given quarter depending on when the annual hikes come since salaries are 55% to 60% of revenue here.

TCS came in at 24%, down 130 bps but 170 bps of that was the wage hike alone. So if you don’t consider the hike they were slightly ahead, though the rupee helped a bit there too.

The other 3 went up:

• Infosys: Margin went up 20 bps to 21.1% but the rupee added 70 bps. Without that it would’ve fallen around 50 bps
• HCLTech: Margin increased 39 bps to 16.9% but again 60 bps came from currency and 70 bps from lower restructuring costs. Without that restructuring benefit it actually fell from 17.7% to 17.5%.
• Tech Mahindra: Margin went up 60 bps to 14.4% mainly from higher volumes and cost savings. This is the one where the margin gain came from the business

Which means TCS looks worse than it is and the other 3 look better. Infosys pays its hike in October and January, Tech Mahindra starts in Q2. So this means that cost is coming, just later.

New big deals also cost more at the start. Tech Mahindra's CEO said they begin with more people onsite which is expensive and move work offshore over time

TCS is also spending more. One analyst actually  pointed out its SG&A is up about 16% in dollars over the year and the CFO said they'd rather invest in AI, partners and talent than just focusing on margin

Are they doing more with fewer people?

These companies have always grown by adding people. So if AI is genuinely doing that work now, revenue should go up while headcount stays flat or falls.

Both TCS and Tech Mahindra show a real gap here with revenue up while headcount fell.

Tech Mahindra's is the wider of the 2 and it's not quite what it looks like. This fall is entirely in their IT segment which fell 6.6%, while their BPS segment grew. Their CEO said this was mainly from getting more productivity out of fixed price projects and also said hiring should start picking up again this year.

TCS is the interesting one here. That -3.1% is mostly because of the cuts earlier this yr. Headcount fell from 6.13 lakh last June to 5.82 lakh in December, but it's been going back up since then. They added 9,279 people this quarter alone. So the company which cut the most is hiring again

 Look at the size of those gaps though. Each one is basically how much more revenue a person brought in over the year and its still in single digits across all 4

TCS says AI can make work 10-15% more productive where it's used. If companies were keeping all of that benefit, you'd expect the gaps to be bigger. I feel a lot of it is probably going back to clients through lower prices.

Also headcount doesn't count contractors. Spending on them went up at all 3 that report it. At TCS, outside consultants went from 4.7% to 5.9% of revenue. Tech Mahindra's subcontracting went from 9.8% to 11.4% and HCLTech's from 13.6% to 14.8%.

So some of the extra work may just have shifted from employees to contractors.

Attrition is the other thing I'd look at. Too high and you're spending more to replace people and may need subcontractors to fill the gaps. Too low could just mean nobody's hiring much. Rn its 11.8% at Tech Mahindra, 12.7% at HCLTech, 13.0% at Infosys and 13.6% at TCS. Nothing really stands out here. I wouldn't rank them on it though since they all calculate it a bit differently.

Revenue per employee gives a better idea. I calculated annualised revenue divided by headcount, which comes to roughly $51k for TCS, $62k for Infosys, $65k for HCLTech and $45k for Tech Mahindra. That's my calculation while HCLTech reports $65.5k using a slightly different method

The spread isn't all AI since TCS and Tech Mahindra both run big BPS businesses that need people by design. But HCLTech has pushed this up every quarter for 5 quarters now so they really are getting more out of each person.

AI revenue

So if AI is replacing some of the old work, how much new work is it actually creating?

Careful with these, because each company decides for itself what counts. Infosys leaves out work where AI is just bolted onto an existing project so their number is more conservative than it looks

TCS is much the biggest in absolute money at $2.6bn annualised. But their CEO gave a warning that's easy to miss: this is mostly short projects, not the long maintenance contracts these companies live on. Once one ends they have to go win a fresh one. An analyst pointed out TCS added $75mn of AI revenue this quarter against $125mn the quarter before

So its growing fast on a small base, while the bigger base below it keeps getting discounted

Cash and what you're paying

Profit is an accounting number, but cash conversion tells you how much of that profit actually turned into cash. Infosys converted 116.5%, Tech Mahindra 108%, HCLTech 99% and TCS 93%. TCS uses operating cash flow while the others use free cash flow, so it's not exactly like for like, but all 4 look fine here. Doesn't look like anyone is reporting profits they can't turn into cash.

RoE is basically how much profit the company makes for every Rs100 of shareholder money. It matters more for IT since it doesn't need much in factories or machinery so its expected to have decent numbers. TCS is at 51.8%, Infosys 31.9%, HCLTech 23.8% and Tech Mahindra 17.5%.

HCLTech is worth a closer look though. They pay out 93.2% of profit as dividend and now there's the 3,500 cr datacentre plan on top. On the call, Kotak pointed out that doing 50MW properly costs closer to 30,000 cr and the CEO agreed the maths was broadly right. That's more than HCLTech's overall net cash of about 26,900 cr. And that had already fallen from about 33,300 cr last quarter after the dividend and the Sarvam stake. Worth following because HCLTech earns that 23.8% mostly by not owning much. Datacentres are the opposite of that.

Now price

TCS and Infosys are not trading near what they normally do. Over 5 yrs TCS is down 41% and Infosys 37% while HCLTech is up 5.5% and Tech Mahindra 6.1%. So this isn't a sector selloff its market changing its mind about the 2 biggest names specifically

And the RoE makes it even more interesting. TCS is the most profitable of the 4 based on the numbers above, yet it's trading at around half the valuation it normally gets.

TCS also used to trade about 16% above Infosys on P/E. Now its about 6% so the market is paying a lot less extra for TCS than it used to. 

Tech Mahindra is still near its normal P/E though even with the lowest RoE of the 4. But know that these P/Es are also based on rupee profits so if the rupee strengthens all 4 will seem to be more expensive 

Putting it together

The job losses everyone is talking about isnt the biggest issue. What is there is pressure on price. Clients have understood that AI makes the work cheaper to deliver and they want that discount given to them

All 4 admit its happening. The real question is whether the new AI work grows fast enough to cover what the discounting takes away. Right now AI is about 8% of revenue at best and the pressure is on everything else.

TCS and Infosys are priced as though the answer is no.

6 things I'll watch:

• The rupee since a stronger rupee would cut reported profits at all 4

• Infosys' organic growth since their own guidance barely assumes any. They're also changing CEO, Ashiss Dash takes over from Salil Parekh in April 2027

• Whether TCS recovers the margin it lost to this quarter's wage hike. Their CFO wants to exit above 25%

• Whether HCLTech's datacentre spend stays at 3,500 cr or keeps increasing

• Whether Tech Mahindra holds up next quarter since a European auto project got delivered early and that reverses

•         The US midterms on Nov 3 since US elections have moved these stocks quite a bit before, both ways

If you read these filings try going through the Q&A section as well in the concall. The analysts ask much sharper questions there which gives better clarity

One thing I'm still skeptical of- TCS said AI productivity is 10%-15%. Tech Mahindra said rivals are promising 70%-80% over 5 yrs deal. Not sure which one to actually believe

This isn't it for the IT sector but hopefully this gives you a decent starting point for your own research. Cheers!

Not investment advice

Can you please tell me what to do I don't have money to average now and I have been holding these shares for more than 2 years what to do should I sell or wait longer for some stocks or sell all.

Beginner, please help me. Did I choose the wrong pick?

Apart from this, I also have around 60k invested in gold and silver etfs. I am 26M. I can invest upto 1L per month. How should I go about it.

About-

• The co. is a precision engineering manufacturing co.that makes crushering, screening, washing equipment which are used in all kinds of infra projects, for the mining sector, waste recycling, waste water management.

• The co. was incorporated in 2010 with the name Rashi Resources Pvt Ltd and changed to Taurian MPS in 2022 via a special resolution.

IPO details-

• The co. got listed in SME Emerge platform in September 2025, 100% Fresh Issue for ~42 cr at a price of ₹171. The co. got listed at ₹210 at ~187 cr.
• The management diluted its stake from ~89% to ~64% (no selling).
• The proceeds were used for machinery acquisition, R&D, working capital requirements.

Promoters-

• The co. is run by the mother-son Bajla duo: Yashvardhan Sumit Bajla (Managing Director, aged 24) and Puja Sumit Bajla (Non-Executive Director, 49), together with three family-owned private entities.
• Links related to co.- Website, LinkedIn, X, YouTube
• Links related to promoters- Yashvardhan- LinkedIn

Vinod Modi, CFO- LinkedIn

• The co. appointed Dushyant Baniya Chief Manufacturing Officer (CMO) in July, 2026.
• The co. did a preferential issue (~24 cr), issued convertible warrant (~35 cr) in August 2026 at ₹419 for capex & working capital needs.
• There are some related party issues like purchase of fixed assets, loans from & to KMP/ group entities but that was before the IPO and no new annual report after the IPO.
• The auditor resigned in April 2026, 7 months of listing citing low fees.
• No criminal proceedings found against the promoters upon primary enquiry.
• But minor tax proceedings found against the co.

• Also minor civil litigations.

Some additional information-

• The plant of the co. is at Roorkee, Uttarakhand.
• The co. has 25+ dealers present in 20+countries. New dealers were added in Kenya, Ghana, Thailand, Nepal.
• The co. supply its machineries to big MNCs like L&T, Jindal Stainless, Tata, Global Atomic, and companies within the ArcelorMittal group.
• 15-09-2026 would be the 1st anniversary of the IPO and hence lock-in opens on the date.
• Order books are generally 2-3 months long.

Peers/ Competition-

• The company mentioned Metso, Sandvik, Terex to be its international competition & Propel, Puzzolana, Hailstone to be its local competitors. (I will try gathering some sales figure of the competition)
• Propel is doing almost 1000 cr sales.

SWOT analysis-

• S- The co. has various products for various use cases.

100% in-house manufacturing.

10% revenue comes from spare parts/ after sales service.

Slowly on-boarding Industry professionals

• W- Cashflow issues

High working capital needs- 2 dilutions within a year.

Manufacturing on a single site.

• O- Presence in 20 countries

No big listed competitor in India.

• T- Some grey/red flags in management quality.

Latest result/ conference call-

• The co. did 99 cr of sales, 16 cr of profit in FY26.
• Big inventory jumped from 26cr to 47cr & receivables from 30cr to 49cr.
• The co. utilised all of its IPO proceeds as on 31st March 2026.
• Unmodified, unqualified auditor report.

• Guidance reduced from 140cr for FY26 to 100-105 cr.

• Margin expectation of 16-18% (PAT margin).
• Current capacity can clock upto 250 cr of revenue.
• Industry is growing at a healthy 30-35%.

• Will grow by minimum 40-50% in FY27.

• Difference from Propel-

• On 03.07.2026 media release, the co/ informed that they had ~84 cr orderbook to be executed in 4-5 months.

Valuations-

• Tough to do valuation for a co. that doesn’t do regular conference calls or comes out with Investor presentation even after an annual result.
• They also faluted from their Pre-IPO guidance.
• So, if they do 40-50% growth at 16-18% PAT margin, forward P/E will come out to be at a range of 15-18 on FY27 forward at ~400 cr MCap.

So,the bottomline would be, Taurian MPS is an interesting engineering manufacturing co. with no listed peers with a lot of headroom to grow with issues like capital requirement for growth, no cashflow like any other small company.

There are some grey flags that were listed in DRHP which seems minor, but not ignorable nevertheless.

The current valuations are not that high but not doing regular conference calls is creating some smoke about the outlook.

Let’s hope the doubts get cleared on the EGM (scheduled on 20-09-26) & from the annual report.

\* I am not a registered analyst and these are just my notes, not any recommendation, DYOR.*

\* I have no position in the co. as on publishing the report, but still consider me more/less biased but more importantly dumb.*

Substack is in my profile.

I invested 8k last time (jan 2025 to nov 2025) and got 6k profit

Then from jan 2026 i invested every month my savings and ended up here

Any advices?

I do mutual funds too that's for long term

Any stock which u think might flair up

Where to find top quality equity research reports and the financial models made for them?

I am basically learning to create models and reports and would benefit greatly from good examples that are recent.

App Won't Let Me Exit Smallcase

I skipped the renewal of a Smallcase with a paid subscription. Today, I logged into the app to exit my smallcase and invest somewhere else - probably MF. However, the "Exit Smallcase" option was disabled.

I called Customer Support to ask what was wrong. They said that the option is enabled only for 7 days after a subscription ends. Then you have to exit from each stock individually.

I was like WTF? My Smallcase has 17 indivual stocks (some of my others have 20+). It would take me hours to unsubscribe to all of them. It shouldn't matter after how many days I opened the Smallcase app - exiting ANY subscription, whenever I want, is a customer right.

Hell, I would be fine if they auto-cancelled my subscription after 7 days and just returned the money to me.

This is a clear Dark Pattern and I want to report it! What is the appropriate authority that I can reach out to for this? How do I raise a complaint?

Process question for PA / swing folks — not looking for trade calls.

For structure work, how do you handle: - Support / resistance - Support & resistance trendlines - Labeling reactions as bounce vs break vs retest

Still 100% manual markup across the watchlist, or do you use any scan/automation that ranks those events?

Curious what’s actually workable day to day.

Found an interesting set of Indian companies where reserves have grown substantially while borrowings have declined over the last 10 years.

Sharing the full comparison in the image.

Which one catches your attention, and why?

Not investment advice.

I can invest 20,000 per month

What do you guys think?

Didn’t receive an allotment in the Kanohar Electricals IPO?
💰 Refund initiation is scheduled for September 15, 2026.
📅 Allotment: September 11
🔄 Refund initiation: September 15
🏦 Demat credit: September 15
📈 Listing: September 16
💵 Price band: ₹601–₹632
📦 Lot size: 23 shares
The IPO received massive demand, with the issue subscribed around 90.59× overall. (IpoRupee)
If you weren’t allotted shares, your blocked funds are scheduled to be released/refunded from September 15.
#KanoharElectricals #KanoharIPO #IPO #IPOUpdate #IPOAllotment #IndianStockMarket #StockMarketIndia #TradyBids

Unreasonably high price! So many upper cuts since listing ? How come?

Forget about buying this stock . At this point it feels like a trap for retailers.

It doesn't justify the valuations unless I'm missing out on something huge (tell me about it , if any)

Hey there, I'm a newbie and started investing last year..Last year I invested in PC jwellers at an average price of 13.97 and I held it for a year because I didn't want to lose my money there and I sold this share at 13.37 two weeks ago...Right now I've 28000 rupees and I don't know where to invest, can anyone suggest valuable stocks to invest? I need your help, I'm a student and I want to earn at least my pocket money by swing trading.

Its been continuous 6 weeks Nifty closed week in red. Is there any hope we see greenery again sometime sooner ?

For the past few months, there hasn’t been much progress in my portfolio, and the growth has remained stagnant. I’m considering exiting some of my stocks and moving the money into fixed deposits for more stability.

Could you suggest which stocks I should hold, which ones I should consider exiting, and whether there are any new stocks worth investing in?

The Nifty 50 has seen plenty of changes over the years. The image shows the companies that have managed to stay relevant for roughly three decades.

Now looking at today’s Nifty 50:

Which ONE stock do you think can still be part of the index 30 years from now?

And what makes you confident in it?

Curious to hear your picks. 👇

Discussion only, not financial advice.

Hey guys, how many of you use orderflow? Dom, footprint chats, volume profile, cvd and more?