PSU banks woo investors, mutual funds romp home richer

After a prolonged underperformance, the state-owned banks have made a strong comeback in the past couple of years, thanks to improving asset quality and better growth in deposits as well as loan book. Many equity-oriented mutual fund schemes that had been scolded for holding those stocks have benefitted notably. Shyam Sekhar, chief ideator at ithought Advisory is of the opinion that the PSU banks were being written off by institutional investors just when they were progressively reducing their NPAs, fresh slippages even while recovering loans through concerted efforts and preparing their balance sheets for growth. The sell-side research hardly covered PSU banks. Barely a handful of value driven fund managers owned PSU banks in their funds. Now, as these banks are going for credit growth, there is a clear scramble to own PSU banks. The Q3 results will only hasten this trend. Here are the top newly added PSU stocks by the active equity schemes in the last six months. Data source: ACEMF

Bank Of Baroda
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 40
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 131
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: ICICI Pru PSU Equity, Tata Quant and JM Focused Fund

Punjab National Bank
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 23
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 32
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: Quant Mid Cap, Quant Large & Mid Cap, Taurus Banking & Fin Serv and Aditya Birla SL PSU Equity Fund

State Bank Of India
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 17
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 346
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: ICICI Pru PSU Equity, Quant Large Cap and SBI Multicap Fund

Canara Bank
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 16
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 65
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: SBI PSU, PGIM India Midcap Opp and PGIM India Small Cap Fund

Union Bank Of India
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 15
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 21
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: Quant Mid Cap, Quant Infrastructure and Tata Quant Fund

Indian Bank
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 6
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 30
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: Baroda BNP Paribas Flexi Cap, HSBC Flexi Cap and Edelweiss Large & Mid Cap Fund

Bank Of India
No. of schemes that newly added the stock: 6
Total no. of active schemes that hold the stock: 6
A sample of schemes that newly added the stock: Aditya Birla SL PSU Equity, Quant Value, Quant Mid Cap and Aditya Birla SL Dividend Yield Fund

Bank Of Maharashtra
No. of scheme(s) that newly added the stock: 1
Total no. of active scheme(s) that hold the stock: 1
Scheme that newly added the stock: Quant Small Cap Fund

UCO Bank
No. of scheme(s) that newly added the stock: 1
Total no. of active scheme(s) that hold the stock: 1
Scheme that newly added the stock: Quant Small Cap Fund