India Capital Growth outperformed its benchmark, the S&P BSE Mid Cap Index, over the course of 2015 – generating a return on net assets of 8.6% against a 7.7% return on the index. Unfortunately though the discount widened from 18.7% to 24.4% and so the share price was up 1%.
With the exception of Financials, Information Technology and Energy all sectors generated absolute returns for the year. These were led by Healthcare stocks, in particular Divis Laboratories (3.3% position, up 35%), Ajanta Pharma (2.7% position, up 29%) and Neuland Laboratories (1.15% position, up 63%). Elsewhere positive contributions came from Materials, driven by Berger Paints (2.8% position, up 34%) and PI Industries (3.9% position, up 26%). Equally important was the contribution from the Industrial sector, led by Kajaria Ceramics (4% position, up 67%) and Voltas (2% position, up 35%).
On the downside, portfolio holding Indian Bank (1.8% position) fell 46% as did property developer Sobha (2.3% position, down 35%) in addition to Information Technology company KPIT Cummins (1.6% position, down 16%) and Tech Mahindra (3.4% position, down 18%). Finally, in the Energy sector, Aban Offshore (0.7% weight) fell 49.4%.
IGC : India Capital Growth beats benchmark but discount widens