UTIMF offloaded PSU oil scrips in June

Moving in line with the general market conditions, the UTI Mutual Fund booked profits in oil PSUs in June 2004. The UTIMF managers utilised this cash flow to buy stocks of the private sector companies in the automobile, steel, finance, cement, pharmaceuticals and software sectors.

BPCL and HPCL, the two major divestment candidates in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) list topped the UTIMF's selling list. The fund sold 5.13 lakh shares of BPCL and 4.88 lakh shares of HPCL in June 2004.

UTIMF's also booked profits in Kochi Refineries (3 lakh shares sold), Chennai Petro (1.54 lakh shares), ONGC (1 lakh shares) and Indian Oil Corporation (37,000 shares).

Among other PSU stocks, UTIMF's profit booking was also in Power Trading Corporation (3 lakh shares), BHEL (2.50 lakh shares), Hindustan Organics (1.26 lakh shares), Shipping Corporation (75,000 shares), Petronet LNG (50,000 shares) and ITI (33,000 shares).

The fund seems to have bought the IDBI stock when it came down to around Rs 30-32 per share in June. The decision could turn out to be a great value pick, since the IDBI has been promised Rs 9,000 crore financial support in the Union Budget for 2004-05. UTIMF picked up 16.85 lakh IDBI shares in June alone, taking its total holding to 21.93 lakh shares.

UTIMF managers picked up bargains in major index stocks such as Tata Motors (bought 6.73 lakh shares), ACC (4.87 lakh shares), Tata Steel (4.82 lakh shares), Maruti Udyog (3.11 lakh shares), Gujarat Ambuja Cement (2.50 lakh shares), Cipla and Satyam Computer (1.60 lakh shares each).

The UTIMF also picked up fundamentally strong stocks such as GE Shipping, IPCL, Indo Gulf Fertilisers, Ballarpur Industries, Bank of Baroda, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Federal Bank and Jindal Iron.

But it continued its profit booking in Reliance Industries. In June 2004, the fund offload another 5 lakh Reliance shares, thereby reducing its holding to 126.68 lakh shares.

The fund offloaded 15.22 lakh shares of Zee Telefilms, eight lakh shares of Dabur, over three lakh shares of Corporation Bank and over two lakh shares of Wipro.

Meanwhile, the equity portfolio of the UTIMF increased by Rs 102 crore to Rs 7,690 crore in June 2004. The technology sector still tops the portfolio, with Rs 819 crore invested, followed by pharmaceuticals (Rs 775 crore), banks (Rs 653 crore), petrochemicals (Rs 610 crore) and Refineries (Rs 568 crore).