'Value has significantly outperformed growth, but we may see a role reversal soon'

Saurabh Pant is part of the old brains trust at SBI Mutual Fund. Associated with the fund house since 2007 and managing funds since 2011, he currently oversees a massive Rs 95,000 crore across three equity funds and the equity portion of the conservative hybrid fund. Pant has been managing the SBI Bluechip Fund, one of our recommended funds, since April 2024. Keen to understand his investment strategy, recent performance, and the changes in the works, we decided to catch up with him. Here is the edited excerpt of the conversation. When it comes to your Large & Midcap fund, we've often heard that two different strategies run within this one fund. Can you help us understand the stock selection framework? We maintain a minimum allocation to both large-caps and mid-caps as per the category norms, which shapes our fund strategy. The large-cap strategy is purely a relative return strategy. We're not hugging the benchmark, but we know the benchmark risk. For instance, we have had a negative view by our research on a large-cap stock, but we have been of equal weight in the fund. This is due to the positive incremental change on the fundamental side and significant positive news flow, which could alter the long-term growth outlook of the company. Obviously, fundamentals play a major part, but the portfolio may take bets which are influence

This article was originally published on June 12, 2024.