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| MFs book profit to pay dividends to investors |
| Ronak Shah / Mumbai Nov 20, 2009, 00:28 IST |
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Domestic mutual funds booked Rs 12,639 crore profit in the first half of the financial year by selling equity.
In the same period last year, fund houses had booked losses of Rs 3,858 crore. Their total loss on sale of investments in 2008-09 was Rs 25,000 crore.
Of the 35 mutual funds that have declared half-yearly financial results for the period ended September 2009, six booked a profit of Rs 8,005 crore while the other 27 booked a combined profit of Rs 4,634 crore. The remaining two took a loss of Rs 254 crore.
The V-shape recovery in stock prices from the March 2009 lows has given profit-booking opportunities to fund managers. When markets fell sharply worldwide in the second half of 2008-09 owing to financial crisis in the US, fund managers booked losses to check further value erosion, said Surajit Misra, national head (mutual funds), Bajaj Capital.
Fund houses also sold investments to declare dividends and retain investors in equity schemes. Due to this, in the last eight months, a large number of equity schemes had declared dividends, he said. A total 154 equity schemes have declared handsome dividends in this financial year.
The fund houses that have booked hefty profit are Franklin Templeton mutual fund (Rs 1,470 crore), HDFC mutual fund (Rs 1,388 crore), DSP BlackRock mutual fund (Rs 1,317 crore), Sundaram BNP Paribas mutual fund (Rs 1,313 crore), ICICI Prudential mutual fund (Rs 1,287 crore) and Reliance mutual fund (Rs 1,229 crore).
Of the 364 equity schemes studied here, the net assets of 356 saw a rise. The total net assets of these schemes rose Rs 83,000 crore, mainly due to the recovery in markets and the resultant rise in value of the funds’ equity portfolios. This as borne by the fact that investors have invested only Rs 5,000 crore in new fund offerings in the first half of the year.
Between April and September, fund houses included only 24 new stocks in their portfolios, including new stocks such as Oil India, Adani Power and NHPC. At March-end, out of 1,503 stocks in the portfolio of various funds, 339 saw an increase in exposure while the funds’ holdings in 562 stocks declined. Fund houses have increased exposure to stocks of banks, cement, construction, electric equipment, engineering, media, oil & gas, power and sugar sectors. On the other hand, fund houses offloaded stocks of chemicals, packaging, fertiliser, hotels, shipping and information technology sectors.
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