What India’s Fourth-Largest Money Manager Is Betting On In 2019

India's fourth-largest money manager is betting on the slowdown in automobile sales to last not more than a couple of months.

Mahesh Patil, co-chief investment officer at Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC, which manages Rs 2.49 lakh crore, said he doesn't see any structural concerns that would lead to a very low growth phase for the auto industry.

India’s auto companies have seen a drop in sales over the last two to three months due to a factor of reasons, Patil told BloombergQuint in an interview. Festive sales were low due to high oil prices, lower than expected demand from rural India and a liquidity crunch within the non-banking financial companies, which are big financiers of automobiles, he said.

While Patil agreed that the next few months will still remain weak for auto stocks, he said all of these factors are turning around now.

"In four-wheelers and two-wheelers, we should see demand coming back, closer to around 8-10 percent in the next financial year,” he added.

Here are the other highlights from the conversation:

• Emerging markets outlook is looking better than the U.S.
• Fall in the U.S. market will impact emerging markets, including India
• Earnings and elections will also impact Indian market
• Expecting some kind of spending by the government before elections
• Rural focus could be positive and might help growth in the first half
• Some stimulus can help to revive markets
• FY19 can see significant improvement in profitability for corporate banks
• Fall in bond yields can help to boost profits this quarter
• FY19 can see improvement in credit cost as it could come down
• Corporate banks and PSU banks to help in gains this quarter
• PSU banks to overcome their own challenges.
• Larger PSUs are better placed
• Banks with stronger management and balance sheets to do well
• Banking and finance will continue to show steady growth
• Consumption sector will do well before elections
• Private banks to show steady growth. See no problems over there
• Consumption growth in India will continue to be steady for sometime
• Consumer durables look reasonable at current valuations
• Like select names in capital goods sector
• Even infrastructure stocks have shown improvement, recovery in capex to be seen going forward
• Global growth to be slightly weaker-than-expected
• Don't expect export sector to show much growth due to weaker global outlook
• Not negative on IT sector

Watch video for full interview

(Corrects an earlier version that misstated Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC’s rank by assets)