Sharekhan's Fund Analysis - ICICI Pru Discovery Fund

ICICI Prudential Discovery Fund is an open-ended diversified equity scheme. The objective of the scheme is to provide long term capital growth by investing primarily in a well-diversified portfolio of companies accumulated at a discount to their fair value.

Launch date: 16-Aug-2004
Minimum investment: Rs5,000
Fund manager: Mrinal Singh
AUM (Sept 2012): Rs1,985.21 crore
Benchmark index: CNX Midcap
As per Sharekhan's analysis, this scheme has been a consistent outperformer in comparison with both the benchmark index, CNX Midcap, and the category average. Despite the volatility and uncertainties in the market, the fund performed much better than its peers, giving returns of 23.6% over one year as against that of 12.8% and 13.3% given by the benchmark index and the category average respectively in the same period. Over the longer time horizon of three years, the fund has grown at 13.3% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) while the CNX Midcap Index and the category average have grown at just 4.6% and 5.5% respectively. In recent months the fund has garnered positive returns of 8.2%, higher than the 3.7% returns posted by the benchmark index and the 7.6% returns of the multi-cap category average.
The fund is well-diversified, having about 64 stocks in its portfolio. It has nearly 92.6% of its net assets exposed to equity while the balance is exposed to the other money-market instruments. The top ten stocks form about 36.5% of the portfolio. The fund has invested nearly 11.4% of its funds in the automobile (auto) & auto ancillaries sector followed by the pharmaceutical & biotechnology and banking sectors with 11.2% and 10.3% allocations respectively.

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