Watches - Ride on it

Till few years back, gifting a watch was a very common idea. Most of the people will not step out of house without a wrist watch and then came the smart phones which changed this. Wearing a watch was no more considered necessity. In fact, watch started appearing a burden on the wrist. This changed a bit with smart watches and slowly people again started wearing it but this time not to see the time but to see the steps one has walked in the day, observe pulse rate, see the sleep pattern or to attend the short phone calls etc etc. Last year I read that growth pace of smart watches has reduced and people are again switching back to wearing standard regular watch

All above happened in last 20 years. Year 2025 saw a robust growth in watch segment by all the brands. Titan, Timex, Ethos, KDDL are some of the listed companies in India in this segment. While watches is a small (around 10% share) portion of Titan which gets maximum revenue from Jewelry but other 3 players drive max revenues from watches

Timex reported 29% growth in revenue in FY25 and having a robust growth in FY'26. Ethos is in luxury watch space and is growing at around 25% since past few years. KDDL is parent company of Ethos and is more into manufacturing rather than retailing like other 3 players. 

Watches are no more bought these days to see the time of the day but it more of lifestyle product now and thus all the watch companies are introducing more premium products which helps in better revenue growth and also helping them on the profits. This trend is expected to continue with disposable incomes growing across in India. A good space to watch for.

Look at last 5 Qtr Growth for Timex : 

And see this for Ethos : 

Mind it none of this is available at cheap valuation. Timex is trading at PE of 57 while Ethos is at 75 PE and Titan at PE of 90. But then they are consumer facing businesses having established brands so command a high valuation

Back after 10 Years

Coming back to blogging after around 10 years. Almost forgot about it. Lot has changed in last 10 years but basic principles of market and investing have remained the same. It all revolves around greed and fear

This is now my 15th year of focused investing. Never ever have I moved out of active investing in these years though the portfolio is totally changed

In one of the posts I had mentioned to avoid big drawdown years. 2018 was one such drawdown for me. Be it large, mid or small caps everything was through the roof in 2017 and this is exactly the kind of environments when most mistakes happen. I got into lot of infra, reality and some low quality (eg Lasa) stocks late 2017 and then came the moment of truth in 2018 when portfolio went down by 25% after being up by 58% in 2017 so net net most of 2017 gains got lost in 2018 and wasted 2 years. Since then, I have been more disciplined. Though 2022 was again down year but this time the drawdown was in single digit. Year 2025 has just ended as flat but rest all years in between have given between 20% to 30%

Planning to write more frequently now onwards