Wealth & health

KNOW YOUR FUND MANAGER

Mihir Vora

ABN Amro's head of equities Mihir Vora says the quality of management is the first filter for assessing any company.

Mihir Vora, head - equities, ABN Amro Mutual Fund, does meditation everyday and goes for Vipashana once a year. He runs the Marathon too. The 36-year old fund manager knows he has to be fitness conscious in order to match his frenetic pace of work.

Vora manages five funds, including the recently launched ABN Amro Future Leaders Fund. The total assets under his management is around Rs 836.22 crore spread across four funds "� Equity Fund, Opportunities Fund, Dividend Yield Plan and Tax Advantage Plan (ELSS).

While ABN Amro Equity Fund has delivered returns of about 78 per cent in the last one year, Opportunities Fund gave returns of about 96.9 per cent since its inception. So, how has he managed to pick stars for his funds? 
 

MIHIR VORA AT ABN AMRO... Scheme Performance (%) as on Mar 28 , 2006
	Equity Fund	S&P CNX Nifty
1 month	8.21	8.14
3 months	20.52	19.00
1 year	78.02	63.84
	Tax Advantage Plan	BSE Sensex
1 month	6.01	6.90
3 months	NA	19.75
1 year	NA	70.27
	Opportunites Fund	BSE 200
1 month	6.69	6.88
3 months	18.39	18.52
1 year	NA	60.28
	Dividend Yield Fund	BSE Sensex
1 month	0.82	6.90
3 months	5.42	19.75
1 year	NA	70.27

Vora says, "For assessing any company the first filter is the management. Nothing can substitute management quality and intentions."

Vora thoroughly assesses the track record of the management and its corporate governance history. Once he is convinced on these counts, he checks whether the company has been consistently implementing all the past promises and projects. After he is satisfied with these aspects he looks for company valuations. 
 

...AT PRUDENTIAL ICICI Scheme performance(%) as on Dec 31,2004
	FMCG Fund	CNX FMCG  Index
6 months	50.50	30.72
1 year	29.13	-3.42
3 years	23.00	3.67
	Child Care Plan(Gift)	Crisil Balanced Fund index
6 months	27.73	20.15
1 year	18.94	8.25
3 years	31.64	NA
	Child Care Plan(Study)	Crisil MIP  Blended Index
6 months	7.82	4.89
1 year	6.47	1.94
3 years	13.04	NA

"I am a growth investor by heart with active focus on valuations. I follow a combination of top-down sector calls and bottom-up stock picking strategy," says Vora.

While studying a company, Vora also assesses the track record of other group companies and tries to get information about the company from other players in the market as well.

"But," says the IIM Lucknow graduate, "there is no substitute for meeting the company management. For thoroughly understanding a company, it is extremely important to meet the company management. Continuous interactions with the management keep you updated about the company and the new developments taking place in the company."

While picking stocks, Vora also attempts to identify themes. For instance, "Media and retail are two sectors that can be exciting themes over the next few years because of rising income levels and corporatisation," says Vora. Another important factor that he looks at is the P/E to growth ratio. One should see whether the price at which the stock is available is appropriate to the kind of growth it has," says Vora.

Vora is currently bullish on IT, IT services, pharma, auto ancillary and infrastructure sector, in terms of visibility of topline over the next few years. "In case of infrastructure stocks the visibility is high because most of the companies have order books at least for the next three years," says Vora.

Maybe that's the reason why he is overweight on capital goods in most of his funds. Some of his best picks in capital goods and construction are Siemens (which has gone up by about 4 times in the past 18 months), Sintex (gone up by about 3 times in the last one year), Voltas (up by almost 4 times in last one year), Hindustan Construction, ACC and Gammon India.

"Pharma, IT and IT services are the sectors that will grow faster because of exports," says Vora.

On the flip side he is bearish on oil & gas sector because of government interference.

"We are underweight on FMCG more because of valuation rather than growth. FMCG has been growing better in the last one year but valuations are not that good. FMCG stocks are not very cheap having an average multiple of around 20 to 22. So, one is not willing to pay that much price for this kind of growth," says Vora. One sector that he regrets investing in is banking. "Banking sector has underperformed," says Vora.

Vora started his professional career at SBI Mutual Fund in 1994 and since then there has been no looking back. Initially he was into research and then moved on to be a fund manager and was managing about 10 funds - all the MIPs (monthly income plans) and the balanced fund. Before joining ABN Amro in January 2005, he was with Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund where he was handling all the sector funds and Child Care plans.

Being the head-equities at ABN Amro, Vora says, "He has a lot of non-fund management responsibilities such as setting up business, hiring team etc." Sharing his past experiences Vora says, "In 2002-03 banking (especially public sector banks) and capital goods stocks performed well and we made a lot of money. On the other hand, I regret buying midcap technology stocks in 2002 -03 as these stocks did not deliver good returns and recently the banking sector has been disappointing."

Apart from his fitness regime, Vora loves reading whenever he can find some time. "One book that is worth reading is 'Fooled by Randomness' by Taleb. This book gives a good insight about how markets work," he says.

Being honest to yourself is one thing Vora strongly believes in. A piece of advice that Vora has for the mutual fund industry is this: the industry should encourage long term investment and focus more on growing investor base rather than assets.