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Fund Pick: GIC Growth Plus II

Dhirendra Kumar

Background

GIC Growth Plus II, launched in April 1994, was converted into an open-ended scheme in April 1998. The fund charges a 2 per cent entry load, with an exit load of 1 per cent on redemption before a year. Starting with a healthy corpus of Rs 198 crore, the scheme witnessed substantial redemption, and the corpus stands eroded now.

Performance

The scheme has posted an annualised return of 20.45 per cent since inception as opposed to the Sensex return of 3.84 per cent. In the last six months, the fund has declared two dividends - 30 per cent in October 1999 and 15 per cent in January 2000.

While it was struggling to just about keep pace with the Sensex in the initial years, the scheme has witnessed a turnaround from last July, and consistently outperformed the market since then. In the last year ending February 2000, while the Sensex returned 60.22 per cent, the scheme has returned 211 per cent.

The scheme has a concentrated portfolio and the top 15 holdings account for nearly 85 per cent of the corpus. There has been rapid portfolio churning in the last six months in favour of the infotech sector, up to 32 per cent of the fund size, and this explains the turnaround. Other key sectors of the fund include banks, FMCG and telecom, in that order.

Outlook

GIC Growth Plus II is well-diversified across quality new and old economy stocks. The fund is an attractive long-term investment for its diversified portfolio, and its pricing policy discourages short-term investors from the fund.

Fund Basics
Objective	Size (Rs cr)	NAV (Rs) 21/3/2000	Exit Price	Entry Price	Total Returns
Growth	64.74	22.65	22.65	23.10	20.45%
Benchmark Comparisons (%)					29/2/2000
	1M	3M	6M	1Yr	3Yr
Fund	21.76	67.80	83.62	211.76	49.07
Sensex	2.08	17.41	11.83	60.22	14.26
Nat. Index	11.52	46.89	50.80	118.54	27.62
Obj.Avg.	7.53	40.12	53.46	129.90	36.68
Top holdings (30/9/1999)					Net assets (%)
Satyam Computer					11.07
Hughes Software					10.72
ICICI					8.96
McDowell					7.50
ICICI Banking					5.92
HCL Techologies					5.34
Subex Systems					4.84
Larsen & Toubro					4.50
Wipro					4.23
Pantaloon Retail					3.54

Source: Value Research

Mutual Funds

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