MFs shed Bharti Airtel, HDFC Ltd & ITC from their top 10 picks in 2014

Maruti, Axis Bank and BPCL emerge as replacement

India's equity mutual fund managers have kept their top-10 picks almost intact through 2014, barring three stocks. Despite being giants in their respective sectors, the three failed to make it to the most-invested stocks this year, said Value Research.

The three are telecom giant Bharti Airtel, fast-moving consumer goods major ITC and Housing Development Finance Corporation.

"Airtel, in particular from the telecom space, has foreseen headwinds from its Africa's operations. We believe, Idea Cellular may turn out a better play," said the chief investment officer of a fund house.

Shares of ITC, which recently gained traction again after the central government allowed the continued sale of loose cigarettes, have been largely shunned on stretched valuations.

ITC was the sixth top invested stock last year. This year, it was number nine till September, and fell off the top-ten list in October.

More, amid buzz of the HDFC twins’ merger, experts say HDFC is highly valued.

The stocks to have replaced these are Maruti Suzuki, Bharat Petroleum and Axis Bank.

Maruti is the only automobile stock among the top-10 picks. The stock has turned out the seventh-most invested.

Fund managers started the year with Infosys as their most-invested counter, with exposure of their equity assets at 5.6 per cent or Rs 9,452 crore, ICICI Bank as the second-most invested, with an exposure of 5.2 per cent, followed by HDFC Bank, 3.6 per cent.

Now, Infosys has been de-throned by ICICI Bank. It is now at the fourth position. The State Bank of India, which was at the ninth slot, came third. Reliance Industries slipped to the sixth from the fourth spot. Tata Consultancy Services was pushed to the ninth from the sixth position a year ago.

Amid this re-shuffling of stocks, it was only Larsen & Toubro (L&T) - the capital goods major - which remained at fifth most sought after stock with a marginal change in exposure at 2.75 per cent of overall equity assets.

All the top ten stocks accounted for Rs 78,484 crore of the equity assets and cornering nearly one-fourth of the total equity AUM of Rs 3.15 lakh crore. Further, it is the first time that fund managers have deployed over Rs 10,000 crore each in four stocks - namely ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI and Infosys, as per the data available from fund tracking firm Value Research.

ICICI Bank leads as fund managers pumped in Rs 13,841 crore while HDFC Bank managed to attract an investment of Rs 11,600 crore. About 260 equity related schemes have investments in these two private lenders.