MPS Limited: A Contra Buy Against the AI Narrative

Shovan came across MPS Limited at a point when the market had broadly sold down the stock on fears that AI would disrupt its core business. MPS is a global STEM content solutions company, handling end-to-end research publishing, manuscript processing, typesetting, and platform hosting for academic journals at institutions like Stanford Medical and Harvard. The market's read was that AI would automate away the work. Shovan's read was different.

He went to the source. He spoke directly with the company's investor relations team and management to understand how they were actually thinking about AI. What he found was that MPS had built its own AI agent, Quark, and was positioning AI as a productivity tool rather than a replacement. The model was shifting toward outcome-based revenue, meaning faster turnaround times would increase billables, not reduce them.

He then mapped the acquisition track record. MPS had acquired 11 companies, each with thin EBITDA margins at entry, and had restructured every one of them without a single failure. The star account program was the mechanism: it cross-sold services across the full content lifecycle, from peer review management to analytics and delivery, creating deep customer lock-in that made switching costly.

The stock was trading at roughly 30% below its five-year median valuation when Shovan made the call. He presented the thesis to the investment committee, walked them through the AI productivity argument, the acquisition quality, and the star account flywheel, and got the recommendation approved. The buy was issued at approximately Rs. 1,700.

Within three months, the stock moved to the Rs. 2,500 range, delivering over 55% returns as the broader market came around to the same view Shovan had formed through primary research.