Altman Z″
Needs withheld for this sector: Built on manufacturers' working capital and asset turnover; a lender always looks distressed on it..
HDFCLIFE · Financial Services · INE795G01014
Analyst mean 1.55 · 33 analysts · 68% bullishConcall notes and the half-year checks appear once the filing read is in.
This is a lending business. Cash-flow reads that suit a manufacturer do not apply: disbursing loans is an operating outflow, so negative operating cash is normal and not a warning sign. Leverage is the raw material of the model, not a red flag on its own. Reads that would mislead here have been withheld rather than shown with a caveat.
A plain-language read of the business, how it actually earns, where the edge is, and the economics of every reported segment — taken from the annual report and investor presentation, not a one-line industry label.
Numbered markers are corporate actions and, once the filings are read, capital and governance events. Prices are split-adjusted so the series is continuous.
The three to six things that actually matter about this company, each with the exact filing and note it came from — never a fact without the context that makes it meaningful.
What the numbers mean when read together — computed from the filings, not a score.
Other income is 44% of pre-tax profit — a large share of the profit comes from outside the core operating business.
Why this reading: Noted with caution — worth watching, but not yet conclusive on its own. Business has ups and downs; one soft reading is not a verdict.
Trailing other income ₹930 cr against pre-tax profit ₹2,130 cr. High other-income dependence means the headline profit is flattered by treasury, one-offs, or non-operating items rather than the core business.
Borrowings rose 226% over two years while the company also carries ₹373,340 cr in investments. Why borrow at interest while parking money elsewhere is a fair question.
Why this reading: Noted with caution — worth watching, but not yet conclusive on its own. Business has ups and downs; one soft reading is not a verdict.
Borrowings moved to ₹3,099 cr from ₹950 cr. Simultaneous large investments can be legitimate treasury management, or a sign that reported cash is not freely available.
Debt rose over 3 years, and most of it (85%) has turned into fixed assets and projects under construction — the borrowing is building the business.
Why this reading: A positive signal: leverage taken on is visibly becoming productive capacity, not disappearing.
New borrowing ₹2,149 cr largely matched by an asset build of ₹1,827 cr. Debt that funds capacity is a different thing from debt that funds nothing.
Both revenue and profit grew over the last year (4.3% and 5.1%) — growth is translating to the bottom line.
Why this reading: A positive signal in the numbers, shown for balance alongside the concerns.
Trailing revenue ₹103,728 cr, trailing profit ₹1,974 cr. Profit growing at least as fast as revenue indicates operating leverage or pricing power.
Every score below is calculated here from the reported numbers — none of it is asserted. Open the notebook at the foot of the section to see each formula with this company's figures in it.
Needs withheld for this sector: Built on manufacturers' working capital and asset turnover; a lender always looks distressed on it..
Needs withheld for this sector: Five of its nine tests (cash flow, accruals, current ratio, leverage, asset turnover) mislead on a lending balance sheet..
Needs withheld for this sector: Its receivable, margin and accrual terms do not describe a lender's accounts..
Accruals are -5.6% of assets.
DuPont decomposition — Devised inside the DuPont Corporation in the 1920s and still the standard way to read a return on equity.
Splits return on equity into its three sources, so the same headline number can be traced to very different businesses.
How to read itA 20% ROE built on margin and turnover is a different proposition from a 20% ROE built on 3× leverage. The first survives a downturn; the second amplifies it.
Where it failsA single year. Negative equity makes it meaningless. Leverage is structural for lenders, so the third term carries no signal there.
cumulative operating cash flow ÷ cumulative net profit
₹111,843 cr ÷ ₹15,525 cr, over 12 years
7.20×
Above 1.0 means cash exceeds reported profit — the healthier reading.(net profit − operating cash flow) ÷ average total assets
(₹1,912 − ₹22,625) cr ÷ average assets
-5.6%
Negative means cash exceeded profit — the healthier reading. Positive above ~10% is where accruals start to dominate earnings.net margin × asset turnover × leverage
1.9% × 0.25 × 22.00
10.8%
Splits ROE into whether returns come from operations or from borrowing.borrowings ÷ net worth
₹3,099 cr ÷ ₹17,750 cr
0.17×
Read against the sector — infrastructure carries more than software.Needs more balance-sheet detail (only 3 of 6 flags testable).
NOPAT over equity plus debt less cash, at a notional 25% tax. Incremental ROIC is the return on money put in since then — the number that decides whether growth creates value or consumes it.
Return on invested capital, and incremental ROIC — Standard in corporate finance; the incremental form was popularised by Michael Mauboussin as the test of whether growth creates value.
ROIC measures what the business earns on all the capital it employs — equity plus debt, less cash. Incremental ROIC asks a sharper question: what has it earned on the money put in since a chosen year?
How to read itROIC comfortably above the cost of capital — call it 11–13% in India — means growth compounds. Below it, growth consumes. Incremental below headline means recent investment is earning less than the legacy business.
Where it failsDistorted in the year of a large acquisition. Understated for companies mid-build, where capital is deployed but capacity has not yet been commissioned — an incubator will look poor until it does not.
The growth rate that makes today's market value equal the discounted cash flows, at a 11.5% discount rate and 4.0% terminal growth. Not a forecast — the arithmetic of what is already in the price. Compare it with what the business has actually delivered.
Reverse DCF — the growth already in the price — A standard inversion of discounted cash flow, used to avoid the forecasting problem entirely.
Instead of forecasting cash flows and deriving a value, it takes today's market value as given and solves for the growth rate that would justify it. The output is not a view — it is the arithmetic of what the market is currently assuming.
How to read itCompare it with what the business has actually delivered. A price implying 30% a year against a decade of 15% is a demanding assumption; the reverse is a modest one.
Where it failsUseless when free cash flow is negative or unusually depressed, which is common mid-capex. Highly sensitive to the discount rate — a point either way moves the answer materially.
Models that need these lines are withheld rather than estimated: net worth, current assets, current liabilities, trade receivables, inventory, net block. Nothing on this page is back-solved from a figure the company did not publish.
Each framework below is a set of stated, mechanical criteria from published work, run against this company's own filed numbers. Passing or failing a screen is not a verdict — different frameworks disagree by design, and that disagreement is itself informative.
Benjamin Graham's stated criteria for a defensive stock, applied to the filed numbers. A company failing several is not disqualified — Graham designed these to be deliberately strict.
Two ratios only: what the business earns on its capital, and what you pay for those earnings. Designed to be ranked across a universe rather than read in isolation.
The fundamental half of William O'Neil's framework. The market and leadership components are judgement calls and are not scored here.
The characteristics long-term holders commonly look for: cash-backed earnings, high returns on capital, and debt that never forces a decision.
Median of the companies we hold in the same sector (Financial Services). Every figure on both sides is the live feed's trailing twelve months, so the two are measured the same way whatever depth of extraction this company has had. A number only means something next to something else — expensive against the market and cheap against peers are different facts.
Bars are revenue; the line is net margin. Revenue rising while the line falls is the shape worth noticing.
Operating cash first, then what the business spent and raised.
One year is a snapshot. These are the two lines that matter across a cycle.
Rising debtor or inventory days against flat sales is the earliest visible sign of stress.
Set your own assumptions and watch the numbers move. A scenario calculator — the outputs are the arithmetic of your inputs.
One canonical set of figures — the same numbers used everywhere else on this page and on the screener.
How the register has moved over recent quarters — the direction matters more than the level.
Promoter rose from 50.25% to 50.54% across these quarters.
FII trimmed from 24.81% to 19.26% across these quarters.
MF rose from 11.94% to 16.57% across these quarters.
Other rose from 13.00% to 13.63% across these quarters.
What this sector is read on: AUM, AUM growth YoY, Disbursements, NIM or spread, Cost of funds, Stage 2, Gross Stage 3, Net Stage 3. These come from the filings, not the market feed, and appear here once a quarter is read.
Read using the NBFCs and housing finance framework (from the listed sector). Primary valuation lens: P/B against RoA and growth.
Read more closely in this sector: Stage 2 movement against Stage 3 · ALM gap within one year · Write-offs against slippages · Lending to group companies · Unsecured or microfinance growth against the total book.
The shape of the business over time (annual) — read the direction, not the single print.
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue from operations | 71,528 | 67,126 | 70,207 | 101,482 | 96,922 | 99,432 |
| Other income | 445 | 766 | 1,437 | 410 | 366 | 465 |
| Depreciation | 51 | 56 | 76 | 79 | 104 | 161 |
| Finance cost | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Profit before tax | 1,629 | 1,487 | 1,441 | 977 | 1,290 | 2,057 |
| Net profit (owners) | 1,361 | 1,327 | 1,368 | 1,574 | 1,811 | 1,912 |
| EPS (₹) | 6.73 | 6.28 | 6.37 | 7.32 | 8.41 | 8.86 |
Exceptional items, total income and EBITDA are read from the filed statements.
| Metric | Sep 2023 | Dec 2023 | Mar 2024 | Jun 2024 | Sep 2024 | Dec 2024 | Mar 2025 | Jun 2025 | Sep 2025 | Dec 2025 | Mar 2026 | Jun 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 23,142 | 26,927 | 28,041 | 26,934 | 28,497 | 17,300 | 24,191 | 29,463 | 20,651 | 29,428 | 19,890 | 33,759 |
| Other Income | 136 | 103 | 174 | 90 | 279 | -29 | 124 | 164 | 157 | 174 | 428 | 171 |
| Expenses | 23,557 | 26,663 | 27,766 | 26,623 | 28,807 | 16,852 | 23,814 | 29,024 | 20,336 | 29,157 | 19,782 | 33,253 |
| Depreciation | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Finance cost | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Profit before tax | -279 | 367 | 450 | 401 | -30 | 419 | 500 | 604 | 471 | 445 | 537 | 677 |
| Net Profit | 378 | 368 | 412 | 479 | 435 | 421 | 475 | 548 | 448 | 418 | 497 | 611 |
| EPS | 1.76 | 1.71 | 1.91 | 2.23 | 2.02 | 1.96 | 2.21 | 2.54 | 2.08 | 1.94 | 2.31 | 2.81 |
| Item | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity Capital | 2,021 | 2,113 | 2,149 | 2,151 | 2,153 | 2,158 |
| Reserves | 6,619 | 13,501 | 10,844 | 12,515 | 14,002 | 15,592 |
| Borrowings | 600 | 600 | 950 | 950 | 2,950 | 3,099 |
| Net block | 585 | 6,605 | 997 | 1,549 | 2,143 | 2,716 |
| CWIP | 14 | 20 | 31 | 28 | 109 | 139 |
| Investments | 173,564 | 216,551 | 238,197 | 291,128 | 334,756 | 373,340 |
| Total Assets | 179,655 | 230,734 | 248,069 | 302,687 | 349,412 | 390,502 |
| Line | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash from operations | 9,703 | 5,943 | 6,883 | 10,721 | 15,597 | 22,625 |
| Cash from investing | -8,952 | -801 | -10,071 | -13,622 | -13,633 | -23,849 |
| Cash from financing | 678 | -238 | 1,985 | -403 | 1,607 | -275 |
| Free cash flow | 9,643 | 5,887 | 6,797 | 10,587 | 15,300 | 22,341 |
| Net change in cash | 1,429 | 4,904 | -1,203 | -3,304 | 3,572 | -1,499 |
Cash from operations is the number profit has to answer to. Free cash flow is what remains after the business pays for its own growth.
The part no one reads: the auditor's opinion, the contingent liabilities buried in the notes, the covenants, and the claims in the deck placed beside the figures that test them.
Where analysts pressed management on the earnings call, and exactly how management answered — the questions that were hardest to answer are usually the ones that matter.
The same read, applied to the companies this one competes with.
HDFC Life Insurance Company Ltd. reported total income of ₹24,437 cr for July to September 2026, +18.3% on the year and −27.6% on the quarter. That is faster than this quarter has grown in recent years (−2.2% on average), so the year-on-year number is not just the season. Over the last four quarters income comes to ₹1.08 lakh cr, +17.4% on the four before.
Net profit was ₹522 cr, +16.5% on the year and −14.6% on the quarter, with earnings per share of ₹2.40. The tax rate of 10% is in line with its recent average. Profit over the last four quarters totals ₹2,048 cr, +8.2% on the four before.
Of the 33 companies in NBFCs and housing finance that have reported Q2 FY27 so far, HDFC Life Insurance Company Ltd. ranks 18th on profit growth; the sector median is +25.7%.
HDFC Life Insurance Company Ltd. is a Nifty 50 company. Of the 13 Nifty 50 companies reported so far, the median profit growth is +16.5%; HDFC Life Insurance Company Ltd.'s +16.5% puts it in line with that.
An NBFC's quarter turns on loan growth, its cost of borrowing and credit costs; profit can rise for a while simply because provisions fall. The quarterly statements do not carry AUM growth, stage 2 and 3 assets, credit cost and the cost of funds; those come with the filing read.
Written from the quarterly statements. The filing read adds the balance sheet and cash flow filed with this quarter, the auditor's review, segment results, one-off items line by line and what management said on the call.
No check fired. That is a statement about the checks below, not a verdict on the company.
Could not run on this quarter: Exceptional items that recur, Auditor's review or audit report, IPO money used as stated, Related-party transactions, Exits, postponements, restatements, Promoter pledges and allotments, Earlier promises against delivery, When the results were filed, Asset quality (lenders), Net interest margin (lenders), Net interest income against profit (lenders). Most need the filing read (balance sheet, cash flow, auditor, disclosures).
Net profit a year ago, each driver's change, and net profit now. Blue added profit, red took it away.
This quarter's filing carries a balance sheet and a cash flow statement. The cash, receivables and borrowing checks run once the filing read is in.
Lenders are read on NIM, asset quality, provision cover and credit cost. Those come from the filing read, which is not in yet for this quarter, so margin, other-income and cash checks are withheld rather than shown on a template built for manufacturers.
| Q3 FY24 | Q4 FY24 | Q1 FY25 | Q2 FY25 | Q3 FY25 | Q4 FY25 | Q1 FY26 | Q2 FY26 | Q3 FY26 | Q4 FY26 | Q1 FY27 | Q2 FY27 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total income | ₹26,927 cr | ₹28,041 cr | ₹26,934 cr | ₹28,497 cr | ₹17,300 cr | ₹24,191 cr | ₹29,463 cr | ₹20,651 cr | ₹29,428 cr | ₹19,890 cr | ₹33,759 cr | ₹24,437 cr |
| YoY | — | — | +15% | +23% | −36% | −14% | +9% | −28% | +70% | −18% | +15% | +18% |
| Exceptional items | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Tax rate | 0% | 8% | −20% | — | −1% | 5% | 9% | 5% | 6% | 7% | 10% | 10% |
| Net profit | ₹368 cr | ₹412 cr | ₹479 cr | ₹435 cr | ₹421 cr | ₹475 cr | ₹548 cr | ₹448 cr | ₹418 cr | ₹497 cr | ₹611 cr | ₹522 cr |
| YoY | — | — | +15% | +15% | +14% | +15% | +14% | +3% | −1% | +5% | +11% | +17% |
| EPS | ₹1.71 | ₹1.91 | ₹2.23 | ₹2.02 | ₹1.96 | ₹2.21 | ₹2.54 | ₹2.08 | ₹1.94 | ₹2.31 | ₹2.81 | ₹2.40 |
| Flags | · | · | 1 | · | 1 | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
Each quarter is read with the same rules. Balance-sheet and cash checks run on half-year and annual quarters; filing-read checks run where a read exists.