Mastergain 92 Set For Revamp; Banking, Power Favourites Now

Unit Trust of India (UTI) is planning to restructure one of its major schemes Mastergain '92 in a major way. Banking and power sectors are going to be sectors of focus for the scheme, while exposure to fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) stocks will be brought down.

At present, the scheme, which has a corpus of Rs 967 crore, has a weightage of 23 per cent in stocks of public sector units.

The fund manager for the scheme, Vinay Kulkarni, said the FMCG companies would be seeing a stagnation in their topline growths. "Their topline growth will suffer," he said, adding that margins could come under pressure.

Banking, he said, would do well in the future and the plan is to increase exposure in the sector.

"ICICI will be a new attraction with the merger of the institution and the bank," Kulkarni said, pointing out that they were bullish on the State Bank of India and HDFC Bank stocks.

The fund manager is also optimistic about reforms in the power sector going through which would make the companies in this sector attractive. According to Kulkarni, due to the problems plaguing the sector so far, most of the scrips are undervalued and getting them at such cheap valuations would be beneficial to the scheme in the long run.

The hotels business is also another area of growth, according to the fund manager. "Hotel properties will be re-rated and we do not expect the excise duties to be harsh this year," he said.

Mastergain holds around 7 per cent cash on a normal basis. The scheme has given a return of 11.98 per cent over the past six months.