UTI’s software sector fund fares well

Mumbai, Sept 19: After software shares, now it's the turn of mutual fund schemes floated exclusively for investment in software shares. T...

Mumbai, Sept 19: After software shares, now it’s the turn of mutual fund schemes floated exclusively for investment in software shares. The software fund from the Unit Trust of India’s Growth Sector Funds has seen its net asset value jump by 37.4 per cent in a short span of 3 months. An umbrella fund with five sectoral options, the Growth Sector Funds of the UTI — India’s largest mutual fund with assets of Rs 61,000 crore — had hit the market for initial subscription in May/June this year and mobilised Rs 66 crore. The five funds of software, pharma, brand, services and petro will re-open for fresh subscription from September 18.

The performance of other sectoral options of the UTI pales in comparison with the IT fund. The pharma fund is a distant second with a growth of 19.3 per cent to Rs 11.93. While the petro fund has appreciated by 5.2 per cent to Rs 10.52 (net asset value as on September 16), the NAV of services fund has gained a meagre 1.9 per cent to Rs 10.19. The NAV of the brand fund was Rs10.70 as on September 16.

According to the UTI, the corpus of software fund, with a unit capital of Rs 16.63 crore, has rallied to Rs 23 crore. The fund has 12 scrips in the portfolio with Infosys being the top holding. Other scrips include Satyam Computer, HCL Infosystems, Pentafour, VisualSoft, NIIT and Zee Telefilms. The spurt in the NAV is apparent since the prices of most of the IT scrips have zoomed since June.

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For instance, the fund holds a substantial chunk of investments in Infosys which has galloped from Rs 3074 on June 15 to Rs 6080 on September 16. Another holding, Sonata Software has rallied from Rs 277 to Rs 557 during the same period. The scrip closed at Rs 601 on September 17. VisualSoft has moved up from Rs 827 to Rs 2115.

The combined corpus under the umbrella fund has gained by over 18 per cent to Rs 78 crore from the initial mobilisation of Rs 66 crore. The share of the IT fund, which was 24 per cent in the initial collection, has now moved up to 30 per cent.

Meanwhile, a total ofRs 3,369 crore was collected by mutual funds (MFs) operating in India in August this year, with new schemes launched mobilising Rs 303 crore and existing schemes Rs 3,066 crore.

Existing schemes of the UTI mobilised Rs 506 crore, while sales were far outstripped by redemptions at Rs 845 crore, according to figures released by the Association of Mutual Funds of India (AMFI). UTI did not launch any new schemes last month.

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Only five new schemes were launched during the month – one from a bank sponsored asset management company (AMC) and four by joint ventures where the foreign partners have majority holding.

Private sector MFs collected funds to the tune of Rs 2780 crore both from existing and new schemes while redemptions were to the tune of Rs 1315 crore.

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