By IANS
Ahmedabad : The George Soros Quantum Fund of the Soros Fund Management Llc, a foreign institutional investor, has acquired seven percent stake in city-based agro-processing firm Gujarat Ambuja Exports Ltd (GAEL).
Founded by George Soros, a Hungarian-born stock investor with a net worth of $8.5 billion, the fund says the GAEL has excellent growth potential.
The fund has been consistently buying stocks of GAEL, which saw its market capitalisation cross Rs.1 billion last week. GAEL’s stock price has risen from Rs.34 in Jan to Rs.73 when the bourses closed Friday.
Vijay Gupta, chairman and managing director of GAEL, said: “Analysts from Quantum had come to meet us over a year ago and did an extensive study of our businesses. They must have found good value in our company, which explains the reason for such a big exposure in our company.”
Gupta said high prices of many commodities globally have benefited the company’s solvent extraction business in a big way, boosting profit margins from two-three percent to eight percent, with strong indications they could touch 10 percent.
The firm’s capacity utilisation has also doubled from 40 percent to 80 percent. The company, which achieved a turnover of Rs.14 billion in fiscal 2006-07, is expecting sales worth Rs.20 billion in the current fiscal.
GAEL, which is expanding its solvent extraction capacity, is proposing to set up 40 “e-mandis” of its own in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
E-mandi is a system used by companies to procure their requirements from rural suppliers.