Graham Discounts Above 53% in Housing Finance

Graham Numbers Flag Two Housing Finance Stocks at Deep Discounts [LIC Housing Finance](/stock/LICHSGFIN) (NSE: LICHSGFIN) trades at ₹500 against a Graham Number of ₹1,217.57 — a 55.8% margin of safety by Benjamin Graham's classic valuation measure. [Sammaan Capital](/stock/SAMMAANCAP) (NSE: SAMMAANCAP) sits 53.2% below its own Graham Number at ₹152.39. Both names appear on FairStock.ai's Graham screen for the Housing Finance sector, which carries an average FairStock Score of 63.2 across ten companies. The discounts are real. What they mean for investors is a different question entirely. Graham's formula — the square root of 22.5 times earnings per share times book value per share — is blunt by design. It doesn't care about management quality, loan book composition, or asset quality cycles. It just asks whether price has strayed far enough from intrinsic value to offer a margin of safety. At current prices, both LICHSGFIN and SAMMAANCAP clear that bar by a wide margin. The gap between them, though, shows up the moment you look past the discount. LIC Housing's P/E of 4.79x is low even by housing finance standards, where compressed multiples have become the norm since the NBFC stress cycle of 2018-19. The stock's FairStock Score of 72 places it firmly in the quality tier — above the sector average of 63.2. Sammaan Capital's score of 54 does not. That 18-point difference on the FairStock scale isn't cosmetic. It reflects real divergence in earnings consistency, balance sheet health, and operational track record. What the Quality Gap Actually Means Sammaan Capital's deep Graham discount is not necessarily a signal of hidden value. It may simply be the market pricing in execution risk. The company has undergone significant structural changes in recent years, and investors haven't rewarded the transition with a re-rating. A 53% discount to Graham Number means the stock is cheap — it doesn't mean the business is sound. LIC Housing Finance is a different animal. With ...