Graham Number Screen Flags 43–61% Margin of Safety in Indian Financials

Indian equity screens rarely produce 50% discounts to a Graham Number without a reason. This one does. A Graham Number screen has flagged a 43–61% margin of safety in a cluster of Indian financial and quasi-financial names. [Indegene](/stock/INDGN) (NSE: INDGN) trades at ₹555.80 against a conservative fair value of ₹1,278.09. [LIC Housing Finance](/stock/LICHSGFIN) (NSE: LICHSGFIN) sits at ₹500.00, about 55.8% below its ₹1,217.57 fair value. The list also includes [REC](/stock/RECLTD) (NSE: RECLTD), [PFC](/stock/PFC) (NSE: PFC), [Central Bank of India](/stock/CENTRALBK) (NSE: CENTRALBK), and [GIC Re](/stock/GICRE) (NSE: GICRE). That kind of discount rarely appears in a rising market without a specific set of fears. Graham Number is deliberately conservative. It multiplies earnings per share and book value per share, then applies a 22.5 cap. It does not capture fee income or fintech optionality. So when a stock trades at half this number, I read it as a signal, not a verdict. Either the earnings or the book value are about to reset, or the market is overestimating that reset. That is the whole game in this screen. What the discounts are saying about Indian financials LIC Housing Finance is the most instructive case. At ₹500, the stock has been punished for its developer loan book and for a housing cycle that has not fully turned. If urban housing demand holds and collection efficiency does not slip further, the gap to the ₹1,217.57 fair value could close over a two-year horizon. But if wholesale slippages rise, book value itself shrinks and the Graham Number falls. That is the danger with any accounting-based screen: the denominator moves under you. REC and PFC both show a 47.2% margin of safety. They are state-owned power financiers. Their assets are tied to the power sector, state discom payments, and policy-directed lending. The market may be pricing in a compression in net interest margins if bond yields stay high because their cost of funds is linked to the ...