Ashok Leyland, ICICI Bank, Marico Industries and Reliance Industries Limited are the favourite picks of brokerage houses Angel Broking, Enam Securities, Prabhudas Liladher and BRICS.

Angel Broking has recommended a ‘BUY’ on Ashok Leyland. Ashok Leyland’s net profit grew by 25.06 per cent on a y-o-y basis in FY07.

The company saw its highest ever sales of 26,147 vehicles for the fourth quarter of FY07 with an export of 3,000 vehicles.

It reported net sales of Rs 2,291 crore on the back of 28.2 per cent growth in sales volume.

Net realisation of the company for the last quarter also went up by 3.04 per cent year-on-year due to increase in defence vehicles. Angel Broking revised its volume growth assumptions for Ashok Leyland at 10 per cent for FY08 and 8 per cent for FY09.

Ashok Leyland is expected to clock EPS of Rs 3.8 in FY08 and Rs 4.4 in FY09. “The stock will likely to perform only by first quarter of 2008 when there is a reasonable confidence that FY08 will see a volume growth of 10-15 per cent for the CV industry,” said their report on Ashok Leyland.

ICICI Bank has been rated as an outperformer by Enam Securities.

ICICI Bank’s $5 billion announcement of a follow-on offering has almost masked its Q4 FY07 performance. Core business growth was, however, on expected lines, with deposits growing 40 per cent y-o-y and credit at 34 per cent in the quarter.

Net interest margin was almost flat sequentially, though it was reported marginally higher at 2.66 per cent due to one-time CRR amount.

Enam maintains sector outperformer rating on the stock.

Brokerage firm Prabhudas Liladher also tags outperformer rating for Marico Industries, the parent company of brands like Parachute and Nihar.

Marico continued to witness a broadbased growth during Q4 FY07 recording 33.4 per cent y-o-y growth in net sales to Rs 397 crore. This was better that the firm’s expected growth in sales of 29.4 y-o-y at Rs 385.3 crore for the quarter.

The strong growth in sales was led by a 21 per cent organic growth and 12 per cent inorganic growth.

“We continue to maintain an outperformer rating on the stock in view of its strong sustained sales growth and its dominance in the hair oil industry,” said the Prabhudas Lilladher report.

BRICS recommends a ‘BUY’ for Reliance Industries. “Reliance Industries’ Q4 FY07 net profit at Rs 2,853 crore was 8 per cent higher than our estimate of Rs 2,630 crore.

The positive surprise came from gross refining margin which was ahead of our assumption of $12.2 a barrel.

We revise our FY08 EPS estimate from Rs 78.9 to Rs 77.7.

The revision is to account for IPCL’s merger, issuance of 120 million warrants to promoters and revision in petrochem and refining margins forecast.”