Export view - By Srishti Mendiratta

 

Q1 FY27 Earnings: The Story So Far

The Q1 FY27 earnings season is underway, and the first wave of results is already offering a useful read on the health of India's economy. Banking, IT, financial services, and select names from the automobile and cement sectors have reported their June quarter numbers, while several heavyweight sectors including metals, large-cap pharma, FMCG and energy are yet to come over the next two weeks.

Even at this early stage, one trend is already clear: the market's expectations have risen sharply. Companies delivering solid earnings aren't necessarily seeing their stock prices reward them for it, while even minor disappointments or cautious management commentary are triggering sharp corrections. After months of stock-specific gains, investors are using the earnings season to reassess valuations rather than simply celebrate profit growth.

Across the companies that have reported so far, revenue growth has generally remained healthy, operating discipline has largely held, and businesses are navigating an uncertain global backdrop reasonably well. But the quality of earnings and, more importantly, management guidance for the quarters ahead has mattered far more than the headline profit number this quarter.

Private banks delivered healthy profitability again, supported by steady loan growth and broadly stable asset quality. Yet the market reaction has stayed muted. Attention has shifted toward net interest margins, deposit costs and the earnings outlook following recent rate moves, rather than what already happened last quarter. Several banks saw profit-booking even after respectable results, a sign of just how elevated expectations have become.

IT has told a similarly mixed story. Companies continue to benefit from healthy deal pipelines and growing AI-linked opportunities, but client spending remains selective, and profit growth within the sector has ranged widely even where revenue growth looked steady. Investors have rewarded execution and margin discipline over simply meeting estimates. The gap between a company that grew revenue but not profit and one that expanded both  qqhas driven very different stock reactions this quarter.

Among the sectors that have reported so far, select automobile companies have delivered a healthy start to the earnings season, supported by premium demand, export growth and improved operating efficiencies. However, with several major passenger vehicle manufacturers yet to announce their results, it is still too early to draw conclusions about the sector as a whole.

A few cement companies have also reported their June quarter performance, with results showing a mixed picture. While some companies benefited from strong execution and healthy profitability, others faced pressure on margins due to higher input costs. With most of the sector yet to report, a clearer trend will emerge over the coming weeks.

Financial services and NBFCs, meanwhile, have shown one of the widest spreads of outcomes so far, from steady double-digit growth at established players to sharply higher profit at newer, faster-scaling businesses still working off a smaller base.

With only a handful of pharmaceutical companies having reported so far and most major metal producers yet to announce their numbers, it is still too early to draw sector-wide conclusions. Their results over the coming weeks will provide a much clearer picture of export demand, pricing trends and margin resilience, making them among the most closely watched sectors this earnings season.

What stands out across all of this is how selective the market has become. When valuations are already stretched, simply meeting expectations isn't enough. Investors are rewarding companies that meaningfully beat estimates, expand margins or raise guidance, and punishing even small misses. Earnings quality has taken precedence over earnings quantity.

Beyond the results themselves, macro currents are amplifying these reactions. Crude oil has stayed volatile on geopolitical tensions, global rate expectations keep shifting and FII flows have turned more selective a mix that makes management commentary and forward guidance almost as influential on stock prices as the reported numbers.

Only the opening phase of this season has played out but the early signals are constructive. Corporate profitability looks healthy, balance sheets remain robust and domestic demand continues to support most businesses. At the same time, investors are becoming more disciplined about how they value growth, weighing sustainability and forward visibility more heavily than any single strong quarter.

Over the next two weeks, results from metals, pharma, FMCG, the remaining cement companies, telecom, energy and the rest of the automobile sector will fill out a more complete picture of how corporate India performed in the first quarter of FY27. These results are likely to shape sector leadership and determine the market's direction for the remainder of the quarter.

For investors, the message so far is straightforward earnings remain resilient, but the market has grown considerably more demanding. In this environment, it's not just businesses delivering strong numbers that will stand out, but those that can convincingly demonstrate that this quarter's momentum is sustainable.

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/

investor@wealthminds.co.in

 

 

Export view - By Srishti Mendiratta

 

Oil's Buffer Is Running Thin And Why That Should Worry Every Investor

Crude oil is back in the headlines and this time it's not just about the price climbing. It's about the safety cushion behind that price and that cushion has gotten thinner than most people realise. For India, which buys most of its oil from abroad, this isn't an abstract global story, it hits the rupee, inflation and eventually your budget.

What's happening globally

The shaky US-Iran peace deal took a hit on July 7, when both sides traded fresh attacks. Brent futures have since climbed 22% and Dated Brent (oil priced for immediate delivery) is up 21%. Back in March, when the Strait of Hormuz was first shut. Dated Brent had jumped 45% in ten days and buyers paid a record $35.87/barrel premium over Brent futures just to secure oil quickly. This time, the reaction has been calmer. The backwardation, the gap between near-term and long-dated Brent contracts, has widened to only about $10/barrel, nowhere close to the record $42.99 seen at the peak of the March crisis. For now, the markets seem to be pricing in caution rather than an actual scramble for oil

Why fuel prices are the real story

Even after crude cooled off following the June 18 peace deal, the crack spread, the gap between crude prices and what refined fuels like petrol and diesel sell for was largely unaffected It's now at an all-time high of $69.16/barrel. That tells you refined fuel is actually scarcer than crude oil itself right now. Part of the reason is Russia-Ukrainian strikes have knocked out a chunk of its refining capacity and Moscow has restricted fuel exports too. Longer shipping routes are burning more fuel just to move cargo around. Global refinery output was down roughly 6 million barrels a day in June compared to last year.

The world's oil buffer is shrinking

In March, the world got through the first shock by leaning on buffers, extra oil in storage, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), spare production capacity and softer Asian demand. Those buffers look thinner today. The US has drawn down 145 million barrels of its combined SPR and commercial stock since March. OECD inventories outside the US are projected to fall from 1,543 million to 1,303 million barrels by Q3 2026. OPEC's spare capacity has collapsed from 3.43 million barrels a day in 2025 to just 0.44 million barrels a day now and it's nearly zero in West Asia. Storage at Cushing, Oklahoma, a major US hub, is nearing "tank bottom", meaning some of that inventory isn't really usable. Global energy watchdogs warn the world may have only weeks, not months, before a prolonged Hormuz disruption starts causing real economic damage.

What this means for India

India imports over 85% of the crude it uses, so this isn't a story we can watch from the sidelines. Every $10 rise in crude adds an estimated $14-16 billion to the country's annual oil import bill. That outflow tends to pressure the rupee, which briefly slid to around ₹92-95 per dollar during the earlier Hormuz scare this year. A weaker rupee makes every other dollar-priced import costlier too, adding to inflation. Retail inflation crossed 4% in June, its first breach of the target band in 17 months.

Fuel-heavy sectors like aviation, paints, chemicals and logistics tend to see margins squeezed when crude runs up. Upstream oil and gas producers usually benefit. Good news is, India's oil-import dependency, as a share of GDP, has fallen from around 6.8-7.3% a decade back to roughly 3.8% now, giving the economy more room to absorb a shock than in past cycles.

What could happen next

If things stay contained, oil prices likely just keep carrying this risk premium without running away further. But if Iran opens another front, say through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, or Chinese demand picks up sharply, that cautious premium could turn into an actual shortage. Prices could then not just retest the earlier peak of $119.50/barrel, they could blow past it and India would feel it through a heavier import bill, a softer rupee and stickier inflation.

Bottom line

Oil prices work their way into transport costs, inflation, the rupee and eventually your own portfolio. The cushion that absorbed the last shock is thinner now, so the next one, if it comes, could land harder and faster. Worth tracking closely over the coming weeks.

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/

investor@wealthminds.co.in

Export view - By Srishti Mendiratta

 

REITs: A Smarter Way to Invest in Real Estate

Real estate has always been a favourite asset class for Indian households, but buying a flat or an office space needs a large sum upfront, and selling it isn't quick either. REITs or Real Estate Investment Trusts solve both problems, letting you invest in real estate the way you'd buy shares.

What is a REIT?

Income-generating real estate, mostly offices, shopping centres and warehouses, is owned and managed by a REIT. It makes you a part-owner without the trouble of tenants or maintenance by collecting rent from renters and distributing the majority of that revenue to investors on a monthly basis.

India's REIT journey started in 2019 with the launch of Embassy Office Parks REIT. As of June 2026, six listed REITs reached a total market capitalization of nearly ₹2.1 lakh crore, rising from approximately ₹60,500 crore five years earlier.

 

What kind of properties do they own?

India's REITs fall into three main categories. Office REITs are the largest, with about 164 million square feet across cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi NCR with the occupancy between 90% and 99%. Then the retail REIT that owns malls with roughly 10.5 million square feet operational and footfalls over 137 million in FY2026, up 7% year-on-year. Thirdly, the industrial and warehousing InvIT holds about 21 million square feet, primarily leased to logistics and e-commerce companies.

 

Why should a retail investor care?

Three reasons stand out. REITs offer access to high-quality, professionally managed commercial real estate without the large capital direct ownership demands. They offer built-in liquidity, since units trade on the exchange within seconds, unlike a physical property. And they must distribute most rental income to unitholders, translating into annual distribution yields of 5% to 7%. Since listing, several REITs have delivered returns from about 9% to over 50%, generally holding up better than broader real estate indices in weaker phases.

 

As a result, retail interest has increased. Since FY2022, unitholders have increased by about four times, reaching 300,000 by FY2026 due to a regulation change that began in January 2026 and classified REITs as mutual fund equity holdings.

 

What factors are influencing REIT performance currently?

The basics of commercial real estate have improved in recent years. Demand from Global Capability Centres (GCCs), tech companies, and flexible workspace providers has sustained high occupancy rates, while rental increases have stayed robust throughout most major office markets. This has resulted in consistent rental income and cash flows for numerous publicly traded REITs, facilitating regular payouts to shareholders.

 

Why REIT demand is likely to keep rising?

Demand could stay strong because REITs still own only a small share of the real estate they could potentially own. Office REIT penetration across India's top seven cities rose from about 11% in 2021 to 19% by Q1 2026. Of the roughly 854 million square feet of Grade A office stock in these cities, only 164 million square feet sits under existing REITs, while another 370 million square feet, nearly 43% of existing inventory, is considered suitable for REIT, with Hyderabad and Bengaluru holding the biggest share. Industrial and warehousing penetration is even lower at 4% to 5%, projected to reach 7% to 10% by 2030, while Tier II and III cities are also expected to play a larger role as infrastructure improves and institutional-quality assets emerge.

This points to a structural, multi-year opportunity, as more buildings get added through acquisitions and new listings, and formats like data centres, student housing, and senior living emerge over time.

On the flip side, like any market-linked investment, REIT prices can fluctuate and past performance doesn't guarantee future returns. Office demand, interest rates, and occupancy levels can all influence performance, so it's worth understanding these dynamics or speaking with a financial advisor, before allocating a meaningful portion of your portfolio here.

REITs have quietly become a practical way for everyday investors to access India's commercial real estate story and rising penetration suggests plenty of room left for this market to grow.

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/

investor@wealthminds.co.in

 

Export view - By Srishti Mendiratta

 

India's Inflation Just Hit a 17-Month High: Here's What to Know

According to data issued on July 13 by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), retail inflation in India increased to 4.38% in June 2026 from 3.93% in May, a 17-month high. A few days later, wholesale inflation verified the same pattern: the Producer Price Index increased to 9.6% from 9.4% and the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) increased to 9.9% in June from 9.7% in May.

Sharp increases in vegetable costs caused food inflation on the retail side to rise from 4.78% to 5.32%. After being stable the previous month, transportation expenses increased to 4.31%, indicating that fuel prices are being impacted by the Middle East energy shock. In comparison, housing inflation remained low at 2.10%. An official government statement identified food items, chemicals, basic metals and mineral oils (petroleum products) as the primary drivers on the wholesale side.

Rural vs urban: a different story

Category	Rural	Urban
Overall CPI	4.74%	3.92%
Food	5.45%	5.09%
Housing	2.66%	1.90%
Transport	4.37%	4.24%

Rural India is running hotter on almost every count. Rural households spend a larger share of their budget on food, so a food-led inflation spike hits them harder in real terms, especially given typically less steady rural incomes. It can also mean weaker rural demand for non-essential goods ahead, worth watching given how much of India's consumption story depends on rural spending.

Urban inflation has its own story. Urban housing costs, though lower than rural, are still rising. And city incomes, largely tied to fixed salary cycles, tend to adjust more slowly to price changes than farm incomes, which move with crop prices.

Why should you care?

Inflation isn't just a number in a government report. It quietly reshapes several things that affect your money.

1. Your real returns shrink. If your fixed deposit pays you 6.5% and inflation is running at 4.38%, your actual purchasing power only grows by around 2%. As inflation rises the "real" return on safe instruments like FDs and savings accounts gets thinner.

2. Interest rate and borrowing cost expectations shift. The RBI targets inflation within a 2 to 6% band, with 4% as the ideal midpoint. At 4.38%, we're still inside the comfort zone, but the upward trend makes it harder to justify rate cuts, which could delay relief on loan EMIs. Rising inflation also tends to push bond yields higher, since investors demand more compensation for the erosion in future purchasing power.

3. Everyday spending power takes a hit first. Since food carries the largest weight in India's consumption basket and food inflation is running above the headline number, essentials are getting costlier faster than overall prices suggest, squeezing money left over for discretionary spending.

4. Precious metals' appeal as a hedge grows. Silver jewellery prices rose 133.21% year-on-year in June, while gold, diamond and platinum jewellery rose a combined 36.82%. Such sharp moves often reflect households leaning on precious metals as a store of value when inflation is seen eroding cash and fixed-income returns.

The bigger picture

One month of higher inflation doesn't rewrite India's economic story, but the retail and wholesale prints moving together is worth watching, especially heading into the RBI's next policy review. The next CPI print is due August 12. Until then, oil prices and monsoon progress will likely decide where inflation and your money's real value goes next.

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/

investor@wealthminds.co.in

 

Export view - By Srishti Mendiratta

 

The AI Jobs Story Is Starting to Flip

For two years, the AI-and-jobs conversation ran one way: smarter software, fewer workers. Recent data complicates that rather than confirming it.

TCS onboarded 14,000 freshers and hired 9,279 employees in the April–June quarter, bringing its total to 593,798. The company plans to hire 25,000 people this fiscal year. This comes after TCS reduced the number of middle and senior management employees through 2025, making them a prime example for hiring caution related to AI. According to Indeed's Hiring Lab, posting losses in AI-exposed professions, such as software development, were the greatest globally between 2022 and 2026. However, over the past year, this relationship has reversed, with AI-fluent, senior roles now driving the rebound. According to a separate Ramp Economics Lab and Revelio Labs research of almost 22,000 US businesses, organizations who invest the most in AI are expanding their workforces more quickly, including at entry-level positions.

The reversal reached the top of the industry too. OpenAI's Sam Altman, who had previously warned that entire job categories would disappear altogether, said in late May that he had significantly misjudged the pace of AI's economic impact and that he was glad the damage to entry-level roles had not been as severe as he once feared. He pointed to a personal example: after testing AI to handle his Slack messages and emails, he found himself going back to answer many himself. Anthropic's Dario Amodei, who had projected AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, made a similar shift the same week. On the other hand, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has separately cast doubt on the idea of a sweeping AI jobs apocalypse, arguing the disruption is likely to be more gradual and uneven across industries than the early warnings suggested. Nvidia's Jensen Huang holds the most optimistic view. He argues AI won't shrink the total number of jobs. Instead, it will reward workers who adapt and use the technology, rather than replacing them outright. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is more cautious. He has predicted AI could automate most white-collar work within about 18 months, an even shorter timeline than Altman's original warnings.

Some data backs the more optimistic view. The Yale Budget Lab has tracked US job data since ChatGPT launched in 2022. It found no real change in unemployment or the types of jobs people hold, even in roles most exposed to AI, through March 2026. A separate Brookings Institution report found something similar: AI's capabilities have grown fast, but this hasn't yet led to major economic disruption or widespread adoption at work, though it warned this could change as adoption picks up. Still, the tougher data hasn't gone away. Challenger, Gray & Christmas found AI was the top reason companies gave for job cuts in June, and large tech and financial firms keep announcing layoffs. Both things are probably true at once: some companies use AI as a convenient excuse for ordinary cost-cutting, while real AI-related hiring is growing in other places.

For India, this matters because IT employs close to 5.8 million people, per NASSCOM. AI requirements now feature in a large share of new contracts, and firms are shifting hiring toward Even though traditional hiring is still selective, a significant portion of new contracts increasingly include AI requirements, and businesses are shifting hiring toward AI professionals. Although a fourth of TCS data doesn't support a trend, it does fit a global pattern that suggests the relationship between AI exposure and job losses isn't as straightforward as initially thought.

 

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/

investor@wealthminds.co.in

 

Export view - By Srishti Mendiratta

 

Electricity Futures: A New Way to Hedge India's Power Prices

Every time you switch on a fan or charge a phone, you draw power from a market that has almost no way to protect itself from its own price swings. Electricity prices in India's short-term markets can move sharply within a single day, driven by weather, sudden demand, and how much generation is available at that hour. For decades, the only real tool for managing this was the long-term power purchase agreement, a contract that locks in supply for years but does nothing for the smaller, riskier slice of the market traded in real time. That's the gap electricity futures are built to fill.

An electricity future is a fairly simple idea once you strip away the jargon. It lets a generator, a distribution company, or a large industrial buyer agree today on a price for electricity, to be settled financially at a later date. No power actually changes hands under this contract, nobody exchanges wires or watts. What changes hands is money, based on the gap between the price agreed in the contract and the price the market later settles at. That's the key distinction: electricity futures sit on top of the physical power market as a purely financial layer, giving participants price certainty without changing how electricity itself gets generated or transmitted.

The scale of the problem is worth seeing in numbers. India generated close to 1,830 billion units of electricity in FY2025, and the vast majority of it moved through long-term power purchase agreements. Only 206 billion units, roughly a ninth of total generation, changed hands through short-term markets like the Day-Ahead Market and Real-Time Market. That small slice is where almost all the price volatility sits, because it absorbs every sudden shift in demand and supply. Generators face unpredictable earnings, distribution companies face uncertain costs, and lenders financing power projects face credit risk that's hard to price. A futures contract doesn't remove this volatility, but it decides who has to carry it.

The need for this will only grow. India's installed renewable capacity is expected to cross half of total capacity by 2030, and unlike coal or gas, renewable power depends on the weather. Solar output drops on cloudy days, wind output changes with the season, and neither can be scheduled the way thermal power can. As renewables take a bigger share of the grid, the whole electricity market gets more volatile, not less, which is exactly when hedging tools stop being a convenience and start being a necessity.

This idea isn't new elsewhere, and the numbers show how far India still has to go. In Europe, the EEX exchange trades over 12,000 billion units of electricity futures a year, four times the region's own electricity generation. The US electricity derivatives market trades more than 3,000 billion units. India's futures market is still in its first year, having traded 33,180 million units so far against spot volumes of 62,758 million units, with NSE holding a 70% share of that activity. Small next to Europe or the US, but a real and growing base, one that only became possible after a Supreme Court ruling in October 2021 separated regulation of physical power contracts from financial derivatives.

Electricity futures won't change what anyone pays for power this month. What they change is who carries the risk of prices nobody can fully predict, whether that's generators, distribution companies, and industrial consumers who can now plan for it, or a market that simply has to take whatever the weather and the grid deliver.

 

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/

investor@wealthminds.co.in

 

 

Export view - 04.07.2026

 

India's Clean-Economy Shift Is More Than Just a Niche Theme

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India spends over $150 billion every year importing oil and coal, nearly 20% of its total import bill, and the single largest reason the country spends more abroad than it earns. It's also part of why India ranks as the world's third-largest carbon emitter, sits at 176 out of 180 on a leading global environment index, and is home to 66 of the world's 100 most polluted cities, according to the latest air quality data.

That's the backdrop against which India's clean-energy shift is unfolding, and it's far from a niche trend. It's structural, driven simultaneously by three forces: falling costs, deliberate policy, and rising capital.

Start with cost. Solar tariffs have fallen nearly 83% since 2010, to a point where solar power, even paired with battery storage, now undercuts new coal on price alone. Once built, a solar plant runs at almost zero marginal cost, while coal must keep paying for fuel, day after day. The gap only widens from here. This is no longer a climate argument. It's simply an economic one, and clean energy is winning it.

Then there's policy. India crossed the 50% non-fossil power capacity mark five years ahead of schedule, with another 176 gigawatts of clean projects already under construction. Behind this sits real government commitment: dedicated funding for domestic solar manufacturing, a green hydrogen mission targeting 5 million tonnes annually by 2030, a 6,000 km transmission corridor built solely for clean power, and a binding mandate requiring every power distributor to source a quarter of its electricity from renewables. None of this is aspirational. It's budgeted and being built.

Capital comes next. Globally, the world's renewable energy investment is estimated to exceed $2.2 trillion this year, roughly twice than the $1.2 trillion flowing into fossil fuels. Even while the number of EV registrations in India has increased by a thousand times in the last ten years, just 4.5% of new sales are electric vehicles, which is exactly where China and Norway were less than ten years ago, right before their adoption curves became steep. The narrative of water and waste is similar: India produces 72,000 million liters of wastewater and 62 million tons of solid waste per day, yet only a fifth to a quarter of it is treated. Large-scale infrastructural spending is currently being directed towards that treatment gap.

Taken together, these aren't five disconnected developments. They're expressions of a single transition, unfolding at once across power generation, mobility, and waste and water management, each moving at its own pace but propelled by the same underlying momentum.

For anyone tracking where Indian capital is structurally headed over the long term, this convergence of falling costs, firm policy backing, and accelerating investment merits close attention.

On a related note, this is precisely the territory the BSE Clean Environment Index is built to track: a single, rules-based index spanning clean energy, electric vehicles, water, recycling and waste, constructed around how much of a company's actual revenue comes from clean activities, rather than a broad sector label or an ESG score.

By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295

https://wealthminds.co.in/