Blazing a trail: The vanguard of largecap triumph

Nippon India Large Cap Fund, launched in August 2007, has consistently ranked in the top 30th percentile of the largecap fund category in the CRISIL Mutual Fund Ranking (CMFR) for three consecutive quarters through March 2024.

The fund’s month-end assets under management increased from ~10,069 crore in March 2021 to ~24,378 crore in March 2024.

Sailesh Raj Bhan and Ashutosh Bhargava have been managing the fund since August 2007 and September 2021, respectively.

The scheme’s investment objective is to generate long-term capital appreciation and enable income distribution to investors through a portfolio that predominantly invests in equity and equity-related securities of largecap companies.

Trailing returns

The fund has consistently outperformed its peers (funds ranked under the largecap fund category in the March 2024 CMFR) and benchmark (the National Stock Exchange Nifty 100 TRI) in all trailing periods (six months, one year, three years, five years, seven years, 10 years) under analysis.

To put this in perspective, an investment of ~10,000 in the fund on August 8, 2007 (fund inception), would have grown to ~80,296 on April 25, 2024, at an annualised rate of 13.26 per cent.

In contrast, the same investment in the category and benchmark would have grown to ~62,031 (11.53 per cent) and ~65,311 (11.87 per cent), respectively.

A systematic investment plan is a disciplined mode of investment offered by mutual funds through which one can invest a fixed amount at regular intervals.

A monthly investment of ~10,000 for the past 10 years in the fund, totalling ~12 lakh, would have grown to ~29.78 lakh (17.35 per cent annualised return) compared with ~27.01 lakh (15.54 per cent) in the benchmark, as of April 25, 2024.

Portfolio analysis

Over the past three years, the fund has taken higher exposure, predominantly in largecap stocks.

Allocations to mid and smallcap stocks averaged 10.72 per cent and 4.94 per cent, respectively, while those to largecap stocks averaged 83.02 per cent.

The portfolio was diversified across 17 industries.

Financial services dominated, with an average allocation of 35.47 per cent, followed by oil and gas (10.5 per cent), information technology (10.18 per cent), consumer durables (9.11 per cent), and hospitality (6.11 per cent).

In the period under analysis, the fund took exposure to 116 stocks and held 20 consistently.

Key contributing stocks to the portfolio were Indian Hotels Company, State Bank of India, Larsen & Toubro, ICICI Bank, and Chalet Hotels.