Kothari Pioneer Infotech: Invest

Recommendation: Invest

Suresh Krishnamurthy

THE Kothari Pioneer Infotech Fund, already flush with cash, witnessed further inflows into the fund in November, a fair share of which it proceeded to invest in the same month. Still, the cash position remains quite high, at around 23.2 per cent of the net assets or Rs 111.26 crore.

Stocks sold: Barring Kale Consultants, the fund has not exited from any of the stocks in the portfolio. In the case of Aptech, the fund sold the domestic shares and bought an equivalent number of global depository shares listed overseas.

Stocks bought: The fund has bought heavily into Sonata Software, Mascot Systems and Wipro during the month. The rapid rise in the weightage of Wipro in the last months is a significant development. From around 3 per cent, the weightage of Wipro including the exposures in its ADS, now stand at 10 per cent. This apart, the fund also increased exposures considerably in Hughes Software, Polaris Software, VisualSoft and NIIT. The fund also marginally added an unlisted stock, Indya.com, to the portfolio.

Fund view: The fund has not said when it is going to deploy the huge cash pile. However, it says that they ``continue to remain positive on the longer-term fundamentals of the sector and see the current weakness as a buying opportunity.'' The fund also says its interaction with the Indian IT companies reveals no slowdown due to a reduction in IT spending the world over.

Despite the sharp rise in the weightage to Wipro, the fund's concentration levels remained more or less stable at around 54 per cent. Fresh investments can be considered with a medium-term perspective in the fund. The risk involved in an investment in a technology fund is higher than the market average. The net asset value per unit of the growth and dividend option is Rs 17.36 and Rs 25.39.