Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Foreign investors will continue to buy: Franklin Templeton

KN Sivasubramanian is chief investment officer (CIO), Franklin Equity-India, Franklin Templeton Investments , which manages assets of over Rs 38,000 crore in India besides acting as advisor to offshore funds managing around $2 billion of equity assets. In an interview with ET , he says that there is increased confidence in the Indian economy and global investors will continue to buy selectively at these levels even if the liquidity situation changes. Excerpts:

How do you see the second round of quantitative easing affecting emerging markets like India?

Despite the recent correction, most stocks are trading marginally higher than the fair value based on the long-term averages. Most of the excess global liquidity is finding its way into emerging markets. However, future direction of the market will depend on earnings growth. In India , for long-term and overseas investors, there is increased confidence about the economy and we feel that global investors will continue to buy selectively.

What could reverse the trend in inflows?

Given that a lot of the rally is dependent on global liquidity and risk appetite, any weakening of global sentiment will impact inflows. Having said that, this would only be a temporary phenomenon and longterm inflows will continue to track the strong fundamentals. There is a dichotomy among foreign and domestic investors, of late. While foreign investors have continued to invest in the Indian market, domestic investors, including retail, have either been selling or sitting on the sidelines.

Do you think the market was running ahead of valuations, after seeing the second-quarter earnings?

The second-quarter results were along the expected lines. While some sectors, like cement and commodities, disappointed, consumption-related sectors continued to report good results. Also, the banking sector, which is a barometer of the economy, beat expectations. We have seen some impact on the margins of some companies due to a rise in input costs, like labour, raw material, among others. The impact of this hike in the input costs will be passed on to the end-user only with a lag effect. Markets, like India, are likely to enjoy valuation premiums due to the long-term growth potential, with the economy being driven by domestic demand.

In a market that has started factoring in growth numbers of FY13, how do you identify value?

We follow a bottom-up approach and focus on stock-picking . The investment style is a mix of growth and value. Our investment focus is on long-term wealth creation and we ignore short-term momentum stories.

Are you making any key changes to your portfolio allocations? Which are the sectors you are overweight and underweight on?

Our overall investment strategy has remained the same, with the broad themes being domestic consumption and investment — infra-structure spending and increasing capex. This is reflected in our top exposures — capital goods and financial sectors. We continue to remain overweight on materials, steel or nonferrous and some cement stocks. In the consumption space, we like telecom companies since we feel that current valuations are discounting all the negatives. While the pharma sector has been doing well, there are selective mid-cap stocks that are attractively valued. In the financial services space, we have exposure to broking companies and are positive on private banks.

What about the real estate sector?

We have very little exposure to this sector due to a lack of transparency. We like some South-based real estate players because of the revival in the demand from the IT/ITeS sector, which is expected to have a positive impact. But overall, we still feel that the sector doesn’t offer compelling valuations.

How do you think interest rates will move?

While the central bank has indicated a short-term pause, a lot will depend on how various factors pan out — inflation, global liquidity or risk appetite, capital flows, fiscal deficit and global commodity prices. Given that the trends in food inflation are being increasingly driven by structural factors, the government needs to address the bottlenecks for a long-term solution. The central bank is sensitive to the fact that the interest-rate environment shouldn’t derail economic growth trends.

How are AMCs coping with recent regulatory changes?

The asset management industry has witnessed margin pressures not only in India, but also globally due to the financial crisis and various regulatory actions since then. The fund houses and the distribution community are trying to adapt to the new dynamics. We think that long-term opportunity in any financial services business including the asset management business remains robust in the coming years in India due to the high savings rate and growing disposable incomes. India continues to be underserved in terms of financial services, given the low penetration of banking and financial services.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/Foreign-investors-will-continue-to-buy-Franklin-Templeton/articleshow/6967219.cms?curpg=2

Principal Plans a New Fund

Principal Mutual Fund is all set to launch its Principal Smart Equity Fund, an open-ended equity scheme that will invest in equity or debt instruments depending on current market valuations. This way, the fund limit’s the fund manager’s role by automatically deciding on equity exposure based on pre-redefined PE (price to earnings) ratio of the NSE Nifty.

As per the fund’s mandate, the equity component of the portfolio would be 100 per cent for a PE multiple of up to 16. Subsequently, it will drop to zero and the scheme would be fully invested in debt once the weighted average PE crosses 28. Says Sudipto Roy, business head, Principal Mutual Fund; “We have seen that once the markets cross the PE of 26, it usually witnesses sharp corrections. Based on this observation, we have defined different levels of PE ratio to correspond to the equity exposure of the fund.”

The scheme is open for subscription from 26 November, 2010 to 10 December, 2010 with the equity component of the portfolio in large-cap stocks and the debt portion in money market securities and liquid schemes of Principal Mutual Fund. The fund levies an exit loads on redemption within two years. Usually, equity funds charge an exit load only on withdrawals within the first year. The scheme will charge an exit load of 2 per cent for redemption within a year and 1 per cent for redemption between one and two years. “Our objective is to encourage investors to stay in the fund for a long time for real chance of wealth creation.”

Source: http://www.valueresearchonline.com/story/h2_storyView.asp?str=15610

Sebi asks MFs to simplify new fund offers

Concerned that mutual fund schemes are becoming too complex for average investors, capital market regulator Sebi has asked several asset management companies to rework some proposed new schemes and file offer documents afresh.

More than a dozen new fund offer (NFO) prospectuses of leading mutual fund houses such as Reliance MF , ICICI Prudential , Birla Sunlife Mutual Fund , Kotak Mutual Fund , Tata Mutual Fund and Benchmark Asset Management are awaiting approval from the market regulator. The regulator is particularly skeptical about capital protection schemes.

According to sources, four fund houses have been asked to withdraw applications to launch capital protection schemes. The regulator was not comfortable with the quality of debt papers that these funds were planning to invest in.

A typical capital protection scheme, or CPS, will invest a small portion of the pool in equities, while the larger portion (about 80%) would remain in debt and money market instruments.

By allocating a portion to equities, the fund will participate in the upside during bullish phases and offer downside protection in a bearish market.

“The regulator will give us approvals only if (an) external rating agency vets the debt portion of the fund’s corpus,” said the top official of a domestic mutual fund which had plans to launch a ‘capital protected’ fund.

Sebi wants us to include some more features that will provide an additional safety net for investors. Changes in current structure will, however, reduce the flexibility of the fund,” the official added.

The regulator is also going slow on approving structured mutual fund schemes where instead of investing in equities and debt in a pre-determined ratio, the fund manager is given the flexibility to adopt complex strategies.
Structured funds require investors to take active calls on market direction. Sebi is also discouraging fund houses from launching flexicap, thematic funds and also schemes similar to the ones they already have.

Apart from CPS, the regulator is also not very comfortable giving approvals to funds and those that work on the lines of ‘range value’ structures where the MF promises a certain NAV as long as stock indices remain within a certain range.

“The thinking (at Sebi) is that mutual funds should be simple products for investors to understand. The regulator feels too many similar-sounding products would add to confusion among investors. Sebi is also of the opinion that fund houses should not launch NFOs to bring in more business,” said Dhirendra Kumar, CEO, Value Research, a mutual fund tracker.

In an interview to ET last month, Sebi executive director KN Vaidyanathan said the regulator is making NFOs more difficult for fund houses. He said mutual funds were misusing the new fund offer option to pay higher commissions and also because some investors continue to believe that by getting units at par they are getting them cheap.

“None of these factors are in the long-term interest of the fund industry so while a lot of people are barking the problem on entry load, actually the root, if you analyse, is that we have made NFOs more difficult,” he told ET in the interview.

The delay in getting approvals is posing problems to fund houses, which tapped the NFO route to mobilise fresh money.

The delay will kill favourable market conditions (like the current phase) to launch ‘flavour-of-the-season’ sector funds, capital protection schemes and thematic funds, a fund marketer said.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/personal-finance/mutual-funds/mf-news/Sebi-asks-MFs-to-simplify-new-fund-offers/articleshow/6966917.cms

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