FPIs take a shine to health care, technology in Q2

Companies where FPIs hiked their stake the most during the September quarter Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), the biggestnonpromoter shareholders in the Indian stockmarket, increased their allocation in health care and information technology (IT) services companies in the quarter ended September, while reducing holdings in banks. An analysis of Capitaline data for 492 companies from the BSE 500 universe thathave disclosed their shareholding pattern for the quarter shows FPIs raised their stake in 175 companies and decreased their holding in 251 companies on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Their holding has risen bymore than 1 per cent in 60 entities. These include several pharma and healthcare firms such as Narayana Hrudayalaya (10.3 percentage point increase), Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (4 percentage points), Aurobindo Pharma (1.3 percentage points), Dr Lal Pathlabs and Cipla (1.1 percentage point each).

Among IT stocks, Zensar Technologies (9.7 percentage points), HCLTechnologies (1.8 percentage points) and L&T Infotech (1.6 percentage points) sawtheir holding rise the most in percentage terms.

In terms of value, Reliance Industries sawthe highest increase in FPI investment, of~426.5 billion, followed by TCS (~142.3 billion) and Axis Bank(~126.9 billion).

Several banking stocks sawa slip in their holding in both value and percentage terms. Prominentamong these are YESBank(300 basis points (bps) decline) and HDFCBank(180 bps). In value terms, FPI holding in these stocks slipped by ~1.65 billion and ~1.13 billion, respectively.