I think Voltas & Bluestar are very different from Hitachi. Hence, comparing Voltas & Bluestar with Hitachi would be like comparing Apples with oranges.
Let us look at revenue profile. For year ending March '09, Voltas derived approx 65% of revenue from electro-mechanical projects & services. Revenue from unitary cooling products was approx 21%.
For Blue star, electro-mechanical projects contributed approx 70% of revenue whereas share of cooling products was approx 24%.
Hitachi has only one segment called home appliances consisting of A/C and Refrigerators. I believe based on data on Indiainfoline that contribution of A/C is 84% of revenue and balance by refrigerators.
That is the difference between these companies. I am bullish on urban middle class consumption story due to rising incomes and aspirations. More & more people have less and less tolerance for withstanding scorching summer heat in middle class India and solution is buying A/C for home when affordability permits.
This is where Hitachi scores. Voltas and Bluestar depend more on commercial segment and corporate capex. There are issues like impact of rising interest rates on capex and bargaining power of corporates for large electro-mechanical projects. These issues are relatively not there for Hitachi where retail consumer tired of facing hot summer buys A/C come what may.
Penetration of home A/C is rising and has still lot of scope. This gives it size. Therefore, Hitachi has more scope for margin expansion and increasing revenue compared to Voltas and Bluestar.
Basically Hitachi is direct play on retail consumption and rise of urban middle class whereas Voltas and Bluestar do not represent such direct exposure.
This does not mean that Voltas and Bluestar are not good stock picks. Their inclusion in TED-XI speaks a lot. However, Hitachi offers direct exposure to urban consumption theme which is its USP.
Comments from TED members are welcome.