Impact of Egypt crises on Asian Paints is marginal

Asian Paints operates in Egypt through a company called SCIB Chemicals SAE in which Asian Paints has a 60% shareholding. Due to the recent crises in Egypt, Asian Paints had temporarily closed two of its plants. However, with effect from yesterday, the company has partially restarted its operations in its two plants in Egypt.

From company reports, we note that the middle-east (ME) region accounted for 9.6% of revenues and 7.5% of PBIT for Asian Paints as of 1HE FY11.The Egyptian market has performed well in the ME region and therefore is important to Asian Paint's international operations. Per analyst estimates, ~5% of total revenues are attributable to Egypt. Thus, the impact of the crises due to a few days of plant shut down in Egypt looks marginal for Asian Paints.

The company has been aware that political conditions in Egypt could go awry. In one of the reports dated Nov 2010, the company has identified an operational risk by stating that, " market conditions in Egypt are expected to remain tough due to forthcoming elections." Hence, the company has not been caught unawares and unprepared for the situation.

Asian Paints currently trades at a historical PE of 28x. With street estimates for growth in EPS at 29%, this implies a forward PE of 23x. At current levels of INR 2,500, the stock continues to look attractive.

Is this for real?

I keep getting a lot of marketing calls on my mobile phone, most of them either to do with caller tunes or Insurance. However, in recent times, I seem to get calls for charity donations. Usually the caller says that she is from an NGO and there is a child who is suffering from so-n-so disease and that the treatment requires INR 10,000 only. Can you please help this child?

I have never followed up on such calls i.e. never cross questioned them to figure out if they are genuine, but I find it odd that NGOs (if this is indeed not a racket) have started calling up people randomly from some phone list that they have acquired. And I have never heard of the name of the NGO (it is not the familiar CRY or Helpage).

Is this a new form of "you have won $1000,000 from our lucky draw/I am from Africa and am inheriting $2bn"?