Radhakishan Damani invested in 3 new stocks in Dec quarter; do you own any?

Ace investor Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani, the second richest Indian with a wealth of $17.9 billion, picked up 2-3 percent equity stake in three companies including rival Spencer Retail during the quarter ended December 2019.

He bought 2.28 percent shares of construction company Simplex Infrastructures, 2.09 percent in RPG Group-owned Spencers Retail and 3.26 percent in cigarette manufacturer VST Industries, as per the latest shareholding pattern available on exchanges.

Damani, who is also known for his stock investment skills, raised his shareholding in India Cements to 4.73 percent, from 1.3 percent in the September quarter.

Among others, he continued to hold his shareholding in Foods and Inns, the country's second-largest food processing company, at 4.72 percent for the third consecutive quarter.

Foods and Inns reported a 98 percent year-on-year fall in Q3FY20 profit at Rs 2.26 crore. In the year-ago period, profit was augmented by the sale of Chembur property and long term investment, but sequentially the bottomline growth was 211.25 percent largely supported by tax write-back.

Its revenue from operations degrew 0.47 percent year-on-year to Rs 83.43 crore in the quarter ended December 2019, but the quarter-on-quarter growth was 15.25 percent.

But Radhakishan reduced stake in Delta Corp, the gaming corporation, to 1.32 percent at the end of December quarter 2019, from 1.53 percent in previous quarter.

Delta Corp's profit during December quarter increased 9 percent year-on-year to Rs 55.07 crore largely due to lower tax rate, but revenue remained flat at Rs 205.13 crore dented by lower business from casino gaming division.

Radhakishan Damani is the owner of Avenue Supermarts which operates hypermarkets retail chain D-Mart.

The rally in the share price of Avenue Supermarts after better-than-expected earnings growth and strong business model of retail chain helped Damani become India's second richest billionaire with a wealth of $17.9 billion, after Reliance Industries' Chairman Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, who is also the richest person in Asia.

Avenue Supermarts' share price shot up nearly eight-fold in a span of almost three years to Rs 2,400 per share, from its issue price of Rs 299. It debuted on March 21, 2017, with a premium of 102 percent over the issue price.

The latest implementation of minimum public shareholding norms wherein promoters including Radhakishan Damani have to bring down their shareholding below 75 percent was also one of the key reasons for the rally in share price and increase in wealth of Damani. They sold 3.48 crore shares through an offer for sale of 1.48 crore shares and qualified institutional placement of 2 crore shares (representing total 5.54 percent of paid-up equity).

Avenue Supermarts with a market capitalisation of Rs 1,53,749.32 crore entered into the list of top 20 companies.

Note: For this article, we consider only Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani's shareholding in different companies.