There is a significant change in the overall sentiment and the way the markets are approaching large non-banking financial companies and housing finance companies, said Gagan Banga, vice chairman and managing director of Indiabulls Housing Finance.

Banga said the last couple of months have been extremely strong for Indiabulls Housing Finance after the government of India filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court in favour of the company.

“The results will be out in a few weeks, but access to funding and all of those issues are behind both the companies and I would imagine a large part of the sector as well,” he added.

Bond buyback

Banga said Indiabulls Housing Finance will start buying in January bonds worth Rs 1,000-2,00 core maturing in 2021. "We have, in the past, been buying all our near maturity papers. So whatever is maturing over the next 90 days, we tend to buy that back in the second week of every quarter," he said.

“That is both a showoff strength as well as an opportunity as far as we see it. We will be putting out large sums of money to work over the course of next couple of days and again the middle of January. I am quite sure that with this display of liquidity especially for long bonds, the bond prices have to mature to levels which are more commensurate to the credit rate,” added Banga.

Bond markets have been historically shallow in India and there are very few players are actively trading in the bonds, said Banga. “Given that we have taken an initiative, we are engaged with the broader market."

Developer loan book

Banga said Indiabulls Housing Finance would be rolling back our wholesale book in the ballpark of Rs 7,000 crore before March 2020.

“We are ramping up our retail disbursements. So at one end our loan AUM will decrease because of the wholesale book but it will continue to increase for the retail book and over the course of the next few months we will find a bottom and then the retail growth will take over. So that’s the strategy as far as the overall book growth is concerned,” he said.

“The guidance that we have given for NPAs is that they would be in the range of 1-1.5 percent on the net side and 1.5-2 percent on the gross side and one is quite confident that through the course of next few quarters one will be able to maintain the NPAs with this range,” Banga further mentioned.