Shares of India’s largest car-maker Maruti Suzuki India have had a dream-run at the bourses so far, and continue to scale fresh life-highs in quick succession. Notably, Maruti Suzuki India overtook SBI, to become India’s sixth most valued company, after the car-maker’s shares zoomed  2.11 per cent on Friday,  after the shares closed at Rs 9,042 per share on NSE. The company currently commands a market capitalisation of 2.75 crore as compared to SBI’s mcap of 2.73 crore. Interestingly the shares have already returned more than 73% in the year so far.

The marked out-performance of the shares has led many top fund managers to remark to say that Maruti Suzuki India shares is one of the best performing auto stocks globally.  In an interview to CNBC TV18, Nilesh Shah, Managing Director of Kotak AMC said that in his recent visit to Japan, he used Maruti Suzuki’s rise to explain India’s potential.

“I carried just one chart with me, and said, I can explain India in hundred slides or I can explain India in one slide. I compared Maruti Suzuki India‘s performance with Honda, Toyota, Nissan, General Motors, Ford and all the listed companies, and said that look, the world’s best performing automobile stock is in the Indian market, and this is how Suzuki has made money in India. Surprisingly, they were not aware of this story and they all lapped it up,” he told the channel.

Track live stock price: Maruti Suzuki India

While investors may be wondering if its a right time to buy the shares, given that its scaling new life-highs, global brokerages CLSA and Morgan Stanley have a buy rating on the shares. Notably, Morgan Stanley has increased the target price on the shares to Rs 10,563 from Rs 9,102 earlier. Maruti Suzuki India shares were trading at Rs 9,116.12, up by more than 0.8% since the previous close. Morgan Stanley’s target price implies an upside of nearly 16% from the current market prices. In its report, the global firm observed that end- market opportunity and superior RoCE support valuation. Morgan Stanley sees 22 per cent EPS CAGR over FY18-20 for Maruti and it further believes that the stock can touch Rs 14,400 in the bull case.

CLSA has a target price of Rs 10,000 on the shares,  and says that the company is in a sweet spot as easing of competition in small cars and entry level sedans is a positive. Further, the global firm observed that the company is likely to broaden its SUV portfolio in the coming years. CLSA says that the valuation looks justified given higher results visibility, and better longer-term outlook.

The company has registered a strong volume increase in domestic utility vehicles segment under by 34% to 23,072 units. This increase is backed by an increase in demand for Vitara Brezza, S-Cross, Ertiga and others. The overall domestic sales under all categories grew by 15% to 1,45,300 units in November, 2017 from 1,26,220 units in November, 2016. The export sales remained stable as compared to corresponding month of previous year at 9,300 units.