Prima Plus is a growth fund that seeks to pay out dividends when adequate profits are available for distribution.

The fund is yet to pay its maiden dividend. Prima Plus aims to achieve its objective by primarily investing in bluechip large cap stocks with high liquidity and mid cap stocks with attractive valuations and satisfactory liquidity.

Normally, the fund will have around 80-90 per cent exposure in equities with around 60 per cent of the equity exposure in large cap stocks, 30 per cent exposure in mid cap stocks and 10 per cent exposure in small cap and other stocks from the IPO market.

Launched when the IPO market was at its peak, the fund's top holdings were in smallcap stocks and went on a downslide till a major restructuring exercise was undertaken in 1997.

As part of the restructuring exercise, the small cap holdings were more or less divested and number of holdings were brought down. The fund manager of Prima Plus follows a combination of sectoral and bottom-up approach in picking stocks.

The emphasis is on investing in stocks in hot sectors. And though Prima Plus might not have been the first fund to take position in a particular hot stock, the fund has subsequently moved in very aggressively. In fact, speed and timing have been the hall mark of all the three Kothari Pioneer equity funds.

The fund has a major exposure in Infotech sector with four of the top five holdings from this sector. Infotech companies account for over 25 per cent of the total assets. The other major exposure is in refineries, fast-moving consumer goods and Pharma. The fund also has a major exposure in stocks from the public sector companies with emphasis on the oil sector. These includeHindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation.The fund is heavily invested in large cap stocks with 13 (47 per cent of the total assets) of the top 20 holdings in companies with market cap of over Rs 1000 crore. None of the top twenty stocks have a market cap of less than Rs 150 crore. These highly fancied stocks have a weighted average price-earning of 21.70 per cent, and a weighted average price to book value ratio of 5.61 per cent. Most of the stocks have strong visible earring (weighted average 1997earning per share of 14.29 per cent) and a strong three year earnings growth of 67 per cent.

Prima Plus seems to have left its past behind and the fund manager has been very successful in his strategy over the past year. The fund could be considered by investors comfortable with the fund manager's strategy of timing his investments. The fund carries an entry load of 3 per cent.