Adani Power, Adani Green, APSEZ share price targets: Bernstein on what funds may have missed

Bernstein, in a fresh note, highlighted the Adani group’s importance in building infrastructure in India, saying that while the group remained highly debated, with many funds staying away until there was clarity on the US developments, what had never been debated, however, was its execution prowess. Bernstein said most Adani stocks still remained under-owned.

“The group has gone through two big events in the last four years – the short seller event in January 2023 and US SEC-DoJ related developments starting November 2024. With the latest news from the US, both seem to be behind,” Bernstein said.

Within its coverage, Bernstein said Adani Ports continued to trade in line with peers, despite the recent rally, and is cheaper than many Indian large-caps with similar growth profiles. Bernstein said Ambuja Cements Ltd, another Adani group stock, trades at discount to cement majors but has struggled on performance. “Most others- including Adani Green Energy Ltd, with a clear right to win, while below short-seller event levels are at higher multiples than peers,” it said.

Bernstein suggested ‘Outperform’ on Adani Ports and Adani Power with price targets of Rs 1,880 and Rs 177, respectively. The brokerage has ‘Market-Perform’ rating on Ambuja Cements with a target price of Rs 542; and ‘Underperform’ on Adani Green with a target of Rs 864.  

Talking about the group’s financials, Bernstein said net group debt has risen by Rs 1 lakh crore since September 2024, due to capex led growth at Adani Green and Adani Enterprises. But Ebitda grew strongly at 22 per cent CAGR over FY23-26,  driven by capacity additions with Adani Green and Adani Power doubling Ebitda. 

“Net Debt/Ebitda while lower than that during short seller event – when it was 4.4, fell sharply to 2.7 during the US event but now back up again to 3.9. On source of debt group shifted from banks to bonds between FY16 and FY23.  However, post the two events limited dollar fund raises happened, but, now dollar funding support could start again,” Bernstein said.

It said pledged shares was a key concern for the Adani group during 2023 short-seller event, with a fear it could lead to a domino effect. But since then, there has been a dramatic drop across companies.

A key Adani group strength, Bernstein said, is gaining consistent market share against inefficient govt-run businesses. The group, it said, focuses on large-scale projects and the strong local stakeholder management is driving fast execution. Adanis are prioritising capex over opex and most businesses are high margin and high capex, Bernstein said.

Bernstein said the repayment schedule for the most leveraged company, Adani Green, is spread out and there are no big dollar bond repayments either.

Bernstein said Adani group’s ports business (Adani Ports), continues to be one of its top picks, as it thinks the company has strong pricing power, room to expand in the value chain and primarily govt. run in-efficient ports to compete with. 

“We are also Outperform on their thermal power business (Adani Power), although the stock has run-up too fast since our initiation – its effectively a 2-3 player market where equipments are a bottleneck and the company has blocked both Indian suppliers for years to come. To add to that, the relevance of coal has only gone up since the middle-east crisis, and the color of energy does not matter anymore,” Bernstein said.