Indian value investors Kacholia, Dolly Khanna and Goel all sold into April-June stocks rally; but Big Bull was big buyer

NEW DELHI: Celebrated value investors Ashish Kacholia, Dolly Khanna and Anil Kumar Goel, among others, were all on a selling spree in June quarter that saw stocks recover from multi-year lows, latest shareholding patterns showed.

This was in contrast to Big Bull Rakesh Jhunjhunwala adding many battered stocks to his portfolio during that period.

Ashish Kacholia topped the sellers’ list. His stakes in Hikal, MIRC Electronics, Mold-tek Packaging, Mastek, Nocil and Gati fell below 1 per cent in June quarter. He had 1.2-3.4 per cent stake in these companies as of March 31. It is not clear whether he completely exited these positions.

In DFM Foods, Kacholia cut his stake by 85 basis points to 2 per cent from 2.85 per cent at the end of March quarter. He chose to reduce his exposure to KPIT Tech by 58 basis points to 1.07 per cent from 1.65 per cent sequentially and entered HLE Glasscoat with a 1.03 per cent stake. Besides, Kacholia bought a small quantity of extra shares in Apollo TriCoat Tubes (28 basis points to 1.98 per cent).

Anil Kumar Goel was no more among shareholders of Shivam Autotech. He had a 1.42 per cent stake in the auto component maker as of March 31.

The value investor reduced his stake from 3.06 per cent to 1.29 per cent QoQ in Cosmo Films, from 2.25 per cent to 1.49 per cent in Mazda, from 2.62 per cent to 2.14 per cent in Sterling Tools, from 1.98 per cent to 1.59 per cent in Star Paper Mills and from 9.08 per cent to 8.79 per cent in Dhampur Sugar Mills, publicly available data on Trendlyne showed.

Goel, who had 30 stocks in his portfolio, increased stake Magadh Sugar & Energy stake to 3.48 per cent from 3.05 per cent.

Dolly Khanna trimmed her stakes in NOCIL by 22 basis points to 1.5 per cent and in Rain Industries by 8 basis points to 1.39 per cent.

These value investors were seen selling shares even as BSE Smallcap Index outperformed its largecap peer this year by falling 5.5 per cent against Sensex’s 8.5 per cent decline.

“The midcap and smallcap space has underperformed quite a bit in last two years and valuations there are looking fairly decent. The relative performance of the midcap and smallcap indices vis-à-vis Nifty is at an eight-to-10 year low. But the risk in the smallcap space is also higher because of the ongoing crisis. A lot of companies in the smallcap space are facing challenges. Companies which have got leverage would find it difficult and many of them would probably not survive,” Mahesh Patil of Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC told ET Now.

Vijay Kedia entered Tejas Network via Kedia Securities with 1.52 per cent stake. He also bought into Ramco Systems with 1.11 per cent stake. His Kedia Securities added 0.31 per cent stake in Atul Auto to 1.47 per cent.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala was seen buying many of the battered names. He added Autoline Industries, Dishman Carbogen Amcis and Indian Hotels to his portfolio during the quarter. He was not among key individual shareholders in these firms as of March 31 but held over 1 per cent stake in these firms at the end of June quarter.

The billionaire investor also bought more shares in some of his portfolio stocks such as NCC, Firstsource Solutions, Jubilant Life Sciences, Rallis India, Edelweiss Financial Services, Federal Bank and Delta Corp.