DII ownership in stocks at six-year high

Value of holdings up 12% in a year, despite flat markets

The shareholding of domestic institutional investors (DIIs) in listed companies has risen to a six-year high, following an increase of 10 per cent in the value of their holdings, despite flat markets.

At the end of the June quarter, DII shareholding in National Stock Exchange-listed companies was 11.7 per cent, up nearly 100 basis points in 12 months, from data compiled by Prime Database. The value of their holdings touched a record high of Rs 11.74 lakh crore, a 12 per cent increase over the Rs 10.5 lakh crore at the end of the June 2015 quarter. The BSE 500 index remained flat in this period. By stock exchange data, DIIs had pumped nearly Rs 40,000 crore in the Indian markets in the four quarters ending June 2016. DIIs comprise domestic mutual funds, insurance companies and pension funds. The increase in DII ownership and value of their holdings is a positive sign for the Indian markets, largely dependent on foreign institutional investors (FIIs). The value of the latter FII holdings at the end of June was almost double that of DIIs, at Rs 20.1 crore. Their ownership stood at 20.1 per cent, making them the country’s largest non-promoter stakeholders. Within DIIs, state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is one of the biggest investors. At the end of June, the value of its holding was Rs 4.6 lakh crore.

Some of the companies with high DII shareholding are Balmer Lawrie & Co (72.8 per cent), Gammon India (66.3), Consolidated Construction Consortium (56.4), IVRCL (52.6) and Monnet Ispat & Energy (50.1). During the June quarter, Bombay Rayon saw the highest increases in DII shareholding in percentage points, at 26.3. Sakthi Sugars (18.9 percentage point increase) and Rainbow Papers (11.45) were other companies which saw substantial increase.