Vijay Kedia Just Bought This One Year Old Logistics Stock. Here Is What It Actually Looks Like Under the Hood.

When Vijay Kedia buys something, retail India stops scrolling. He has spent thirty years turning small, unknown companies into multibaggers, and his name alone can move a stock. So when his firm showed up buying a logistics company that has been listed for barely a year, the headlines wrote themselves.

But a headline is not a thesis. The smart question is never just “what did he buy.” It is “how did he buy it, what is he actually buying into, and what is the price you are being asked to pay today.” So let us go under the hood of Iware Supplychain Services, calmly and honestly, and separate the story from the numbers.

What actually happened

There are two separate events here, and most people are blending them into one. They are not the same, and the difference matters.

The first was a preferential allotment. On 5 June 2026, Iware allotted 7,90,800 fresh equity shares at 255 rupees each, raising about 20.16 crore rupees. Going by media reporting, Kedia took this through his personal holding and through Kedia Securities, for a combined stake of roughly six percent. Now understand what a preferential allotment is. It is the company creating brand new shares and handing them to a chosen investor at a fixed price. It is capital raising. It is not the same as an investor walking into the open market and competing with everyone else for stock. It is a good signal, but it is a softer one.

The second event is the one that is more interesting. Going by exchange bulk deal data, Kedia Securities then bought over 5 lakh shares in the open market at around 348 rupees each, worth more than 17 crore rupees. That is roughly 36 percent above the price he paid in the preferential allotment. When a seasoned investor pays up in the open market, above his own recent allotment price, that is a different kind of conviction. He is not being handed shares. He is buying them.

So to answer the question everyone is asking: this is not a fresh, first time entry. Kedia was already in through the allotment, and this open market buying is him adding on top, at a higher price, near the all time high. And he is doing it as a non promoter investor, not as an insider. The preferential filing itself states the allottees are not part of the promoter group.

What Iware actually does

Iware Supplychain Services is an Ahmedabad based, pan India logistics company. It was incorporated in 2018, converted to a public company in 2024, and listed on the NSE SME platform in May 2025 at an issue price of 95 rupees. It actually listed at a small discount, around 85 rupees, which is worth remembering given where the stock trades now.

The business runs across five service lines: warehousing, including third party logistics and carrying and forwarding, transportation, rake handling, business auxiliary services, and rental income. The interesting piece is the rail rake handling, where the company works directly with Indian Railways BCN rakes to move bulk goods. It operates roughly 8 to 8.5 lakh square feet of warehousing spread across about eleven facilities in seven states, and serves clients across FMCG, pharma, retail and e commerce. The promoters, Krishnakumar Tanwar and Rajnish Gautam, bring more than twenty years of logistics experience.

The macro backdrop is genuinely strong. India’s logistics sector is huge, still largely unorganised, and modernising fast on the back of GST, dedicated freight corridors and rising warehousing demand. A small, hungry, asset heavy player can grow quickly here if it executes. Iware is clearly trying to.

The growth story that has everyone excited

The numbers explain the excitement. Look at the three year march:

In FY24, revenue was about 59 crore with a net profit of around 4.2 crore. In FY25, revenue grew to about 86 crore, up 47 percent, with profit up 92 percent to about 8 crore. Then in FY26, revenue tripled to around 258 crore, and profit rose to about 15 crore. A revenue CAGR north of 50 percent against an industry median in the single digits is exactly the kind of chart that catches a big investor’s eye. Add a headline return on equity in the high twenties, no promoter pledging, and a hot sector, and you can see why the story sells.

That is the bull case, and it is a real one. Now comes the part most reels and headlines quietly skip.

The risks you actually need to watch

This is where I want you to slow down, because Iware is a story stock with real red flags, not a proven compounder. None of these are reasons to panic. They are reasons to think.

The cash flow problem is the big one. In FY26, revenue tripled and reported profit rose, yet operating cash flow turned negative. That is the single most important line in this whole analysis. A company can report rising profit on paper while cash is actually flowing out of the business, because that profit is tied up in receivables, inventory and working capital. Profit is an opinion. Cash is a fact. When the two diverge this sharply, you investigate before you celebrate.

The margin compression tells the same story from another angle. Revenue tripled, but profit did not even double. Operating margin fell from roughly 20 percent to roughly 11 percent, and net margin dropped from about 9 percent to under 6 percent. Growing fast by taking lower margin work is a choice, but it means the quality of each rupee of revenue is falling even as the top line explodes.

Working capital is stretching. Debtor days rose from about 66 to about 85. That means customers are taking longer to pay, which is exactly what you would expect to see feeding a negative operating cash flow. In an asset heavy, capital hungry business, rising receivables plus heavy capex is a combination that demands constant external funding.

Which brings us to leverage. Iware carries a debt to equity ratio of roughly 1.8, with multiple secured charges from banks against its assets. That debt is part of what powers the high return on equity, and leverage cuts both ways. It flatters returns when things go well and it punishes you when growth or cash flow stumbles. A high ROE built on high debt is not the same as a high ROE built on clean, self funded operations.

The revenue is also heavily back ended and lumpy. In the first half of FY26 the company did about 93 crore of revenue. The full year was around 258 crore. That means the second half did roughly 165 crore, nearly double the first half. Big jumps like that can be genuine scaling, but in a young company they can also be lumpy, project driven, or hard to repeat. You want to see this sustained over more quarters before treating it as the new normal.

Then there is the nature of the stock itself. This is an SME listing. Liquidity is thin, some sessions trade only a few thousand shares, and thin stocks move violently in both directions. It is one year into its listed life, so there is almost no long term track record to lean on, no history of how management behaves across a full cycle. And it is a promoter family run business, with family members in the CEO and director seats and a CFO appointed only in late 2025. None of that is disqualifying, but it all raises the bar on trust, and trust in a one year old SME has to be earned over time, not assumed.

What you are actually paying

Price matters as much as the business. Iware trades at a price to earnings ratio in the mid twenties and a price to book of around seven, near its all time high, after a run of roughly three hundred percent in a year. You are not being offered a bargain here. You are being asked to pay a premium multiple for a company whose cash flows just went negative and whose margins are compressing.

That does not automatically make it a bad investment. High growth can grow into a rich multiple. But it does mean the margin for error is thin. At this price, the market is already assuming the growth continues and the cash flow problem gets fixed. If either of those assumptions slips, the stock has a long way to fall, and thin SME liquidity will make that fall faster than you would like.

The honest takeaway

Here is the whole thing in one breath. Iware is a genuinely fast growing logistics company in a strong sector, now backed by one of India’s most respected investors who is buying in the open market above his own allotment price. That is the exciting half. The sober half is that the growth is not yet converting into cash, margins are shrinking, debt and receivables are rising, the listing is barely a year old, and the stock is priced for perfection near its high.

Both halves are true at the same time. A big investor’s name tells you where to look. It does not tell you what to pay, when to buy, or how much risk you are taking. Kedia can afford a position that goes nowhere for two years or halves before it doubles. Most retail investors size positions as if that cannot happen to them, and that is where the real damage gets done.

So do the work. Pull the FY26 cash flow statement and read it line by line. Watch the next two quarters for whether cash flow turns positive and whether that second half revenue holds. And remember the lesson that sits underneath this entire story: when a famous investor buys, always ask whether they got the shares or actually bought them, and always check the price you are being asked to pay long after they already got theirs.

This article is for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice and not a buy, sell or hold recommendation. I am NISM certified and not SEBI registered. All figures are sourced from the company’s exchange filings and public financial data and may change as new information is filed, so verify the latest numbers before acting. Please do your own research or consult a SEBI registered advisor before making any investment decision.