Kacholia offloads Jhunjhunwala-backed Aptech, raises bets in 5 stocks & buys 3 new in Q1

NEW DELHI: Well-known value investor Ashish Kacholia probably exited Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-promoted Aptech, but bought into at least three new names during the June quarter, which saw a lot of turmoil in second-rung socks.

Kacholia bought stakes, probably, for the first time in Khadim India (1.15 per cent stake), V2 Retail (1.1 per cent), NIIT (2.6 per cent)during the June quarter while he was seen consolidated his stakes in Majesco and Vishnu Chemicals.

He sold his stake in Aptech, but it was not known whether he exited the counter completely. He first entered the counter in March quarter of 2017.


Kacholia was also seen selling shares in Pokarna and APL Apollo Tubes, among others.

The ace investor and held more than 1 per cent stake in at least two dozen stocks as of June end, quarterly shareholding data showed.

Kacholia, who has been building his own portfolio since 2003, has held more than 1 per cent stake in at least 67 different companies at different point of time.

Portfolio rejig
Among his known holdings, Shaily Engineering Plastics saw Kacholia hike stake by 167 basis points to 7.21 per cent at the end of June quarter from 5.54 per cent at the end of March quarter. He increased stakes from 1.54 per cent to 1.69 per cent in GHCL, 1.47 per cent to 1.59 per cent in Ester Industries, 1.4 per cent to 2 per cent in Poly Medicure and 4 per cent to 4.1 per cent (1,20,039 additional shares) in Nocil.

On the other hand, he was seen lowering his holding to 6 per cent from 7.3 per cent in Pokarna on a sequential basis. He also sold shares in APL Apollo to take his holding to 1.5 per cent from 1.7 per cent.

In the Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Aptech, Kacholia sold his shares even as a few brokerages said the IT firm had a scalable asset-light model and is looking to double the franchisee centres to 2,500 in next three years. The company is likely to report revenue growth in excess of 20 per cent in its retail segment in the coming years, the brokerages said.

Kacholia maintained his holdings in KPIT Technologies (1.8 per cent), Vadilal Industries (at 7.2 per cent), Vaibhav Global (1.5 per cent, bought 1,500 additional shares), Shreyas Shipping & Logistics (1.8 per cent), Mirc Electronics (3.5 per cent), Mold-Tek Packaging (3.1 per cent), KEI Industries (3.2 per cent) and Acrysil (4.3 per cent).

The ace investor started his career with Prime Securities and later joined the equity research desk of Edelweiss Securities. After learning the ropes, he started Lucky Investment Managers.

At present, he has investments in his name as well as in the name of his wife Sushmita. Lucky Investments Managers invests in equities separately.

Battering of smallcaps and global trend
While largecap barometer Sensex has jumped 10 per cent this calendar to hit an all-time high, the BSE Smallcap index has dropped 15 per cent.

A study by ICICI Securities showed equity markets in countries like the US, China and Indonesia are not seeing any systematic underperformance of smallcap/midcap over their largecap peers.

In the US, the reverse is true, with the Russell2000 index outperforming the Dow so far in 2018, the report said.

“Don’t expect a V-shaped recovery in smallcaps, as they have led the earnings downgrade so far. The June quarter earnings season has started on a lukewarm note with higher number of consensus downgrades and upgrades for FY19E. Given that early results usually have a higher percentage of upgrades, smallcap stocks have had higher number of downgrades compared with the largecaps,” it noted.