New Delhi, Mar 13: Despite a lower weightage to technology stocks, UTI's services sector Fund has comprehensively beaten its software fund for the three-month period ending February 29, 2000. While services sector fund generated a return of 200 per cent during this period, software fund was a distant second with a three month return of 131 per cent. Both the funds were launched as part of the sectoral series which also includes pharma, healthcare, petro and brand value funds. The NAVs of the two funds are running neck and neck in March with the software fund at Rs 47.72 and services fund at Rs 44.23 as on March 10, 2000. In fact, the NAV of service fund had fallen below par to Rs 9.53 while the software fund was around Rs 14-levels in November last year.
The top six holdings of the software fund account for 58 per cent of the portfolio as February 21, 2000 and include Infosys, NIIT, Mastek, Digital and Satyam Computer. Zee Telefilm is also a part of the portfolio with a weightage of 8.69 per cent. On theother hand, services fund has four IT stocks in the top six holdings with Information Technologies, Infosys, Rolta and Pentafour accounting for 31.68 per cent of the total portfolio. The other two stocks are ICICI and BSES.
``The services sector fund has been able to outperform the software fund with an ideal blend of IT and good stocks from the non-IT sector. The fund also seems to have benefitted by taking some early bets in a stock like Information Technologies which has risen to Rs 2500-levels against a 52-week low of around Rs 100,'' says an analyst. ``A stock like BSES has also given handsome returns after an IT tag was attached to the scrip,'' he adds.
On the other hand, the three other funds of UTI's sectoral series continue to languish with the NAV of UTI Pharma at Rs 10.92 while UTI Petro at Rs 10.10. The third fund, UTI Brand Value has generated a return of 46.8 per cent since inception with its NAV at Rs 14.68.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.