L&T Equity Fund

The fund is managed by CIO Soumendra Nath Lahiri, who has more than 20 years of experience in the investment side and has been managing or advising on portfolios for 10-plus years. The experience and knowledge that the core team of Lahiri (CIO), Venugopal Mangat (head of equities) and Vihang Naik (fund manager) bring to the table is crucial.

Lahiri follows a bottom-up, benchmark-agnostic investment approach focused on investing in companies that are efficient allocators of capital. Thus, ROCE is one of the critical parameters used for evaluation.

The manager focuses on the profitability and attractiveness of a business, competitive position within its industry, and stage in the business cycle. Lahiri considers DCF valuations along with P/E, EV/EBDITA, and P/BV as key parameters while evaluating stocks and considers relative valuations within the industry to find companies that are trading at reasonable valuations. Analysts track a core list of about 300 companies that are evaluated on the basis of business, management, and valuations. The analysts derive price targets for the stocks and also run sector-neutral portfolios for the sectors, which serve as guides to the fund manager while investing. The risk management function plays a critical role in highlighting key portfolio risks and defines limits of the maximum holding they can have in a company.

Lahiri prefers running portfolios of 50-60 stocks. He looks at the competitive structure of the industry, entry barriers, regulatory environment and growth opportunities for the company within the sector while scouting for opportunities.