ADAG funds lower Reliance Industries exposure

Anil Ambani group's Reliance Mutual Fund has lowered its exposure to Reliance Industries, presumably because of a below-par performance of the country's most-valued firm in the stock market in recent months.

On its part, elder Ambani sibling Mukesh-led RIL continued to avoid Reliance MF schemes for its investment needs in the latest fiscal ended March 31, even as it parked money in a host of schemes from other fund houses.

RIL has traditionally been the top-held stock for most of the equity-focussed schemes of Reliance MF, but the scenario has changed drastically over past few months.

RIL is currently held as a top-held stock in only two of the Reliance Mutual Fund schemes, down from its top-owned stock position for five schemes till a couple of months ago.

A host of other fund houses are also seen as cutting their exposure to RIL, as the stock no more holds the position of the top-held stock for overall mutual fund space.

According to the latest data available for portfolio holdings of all the MF schemes, RIL was ranked second after ICICI Bank in the list of top-held stocks by all the mutual funds together in March this year.

All the funds together held RIL shares worth about Rs 7,934 crore in March, as against Rs 8716 crore-worth shares of ICICI Bank. Besides, RIL holding was only a shade above the shares worth Rs 7,640 crore of Infosys during the month.

Being the country's most valued firm with a market capitalisation of Rs 3,00,000 crore, RIL has traditionally been among the most favoured stocks for most of the funds.

However, a below-average performance has led to many funds lowering their exposure to this stock in recent months. The stock has fallen by about 8 in past one year, even as sensex rose by about 12 and another benchmark Nifty by about 6.

Earlier, a host of MF schemes used to invest 9-10 of their corpus in RIL shares, which has now dropped to 5-7, a portfolio analysis of various funds shows.

Along with other fund houses, those part of ADAG group have also cut their exposure to RIL stock.

Only Sensex and NIfty-focussed schemes of Reliance MF -- Reliance Index Fund-Sensex Plan and Reliance Index Fund- had RIL as the top-held stock at the end of last month.

In comparison, RIL was the top-held stock at the end of February for five Reliance MF schemes -- Reliance Quant Plus Fund, Reliance Equity Fund, Reliance Index Fund - Nifty Plan, Reliance Index Fund - Sensex Plan and Reliance Natural Resources Fund.