Siddharth Vora slashes financials, bets on pharma and value stocks amid market turbulence – News Air Insight

Siddharth Vora, Executive Director at PL Asset Management, reveals how a decisive trim in financials and a disciplined value-investing approach helped the fund outperform benchmarks by 10–12% over the last year.

As Indian equity markets navigate a volatile stretch, PL Asset Management’s Siddharth Vora has been quietly repositioning. In an interview with ET Now, the fund’s Executive Director laid out a strategy built on three pillars: raising cash buffers, rotating away from financials, and doubling down on value stocks in sectors like pharma, energy, and metals.

The fund has delivered roughly 10–12% alpha over its benchmark in the past 12 months — a performance Vora attributes not to bold contrarian bets, but to disciplined factor investing centred on value with low volatility.

The cash fortress: 25% in defensive positions

With markets under broad selling pressure, Vora says roughly 25% of the portfolio now sits in what he calls “cash-like” positions. Around 7–10% is held in actual cash, while the remainder is invested in names such as ONGC, Coal India, NTPC, and select pharmaceutical stocks — all of which have shown resilience during the current downturn.

The great financial retreat

Perhaps the most dramatic portfolio move of the past two months has been a wholesale retreat from financial stocks. Two months ago, financials comprised 35–39% of the portfolio, dominated by PSU banks, capital market plays, and NBFCs. Today, that figure stands at just 13%.

The exit from PSU banks, Vora explains, was driven by profit-booking and de-risking after a strong multi-year rally — compounded by a global environment of energy shocks and geopolitical uncertainty. “After 12 months of being overweight, we are finally underweight,” he confirmed.

Pharma: value beats CDMO hype

Within pharma, Vora steers clear of the CDMO theme that has captured market imagination, preferring instead names that score high on value and low-volatility factors. Aurobindo Pharma and Lupin are among the holdings that pass his quantitative screen. “The entire CDMO play is clearly not part of the value segment within pharma — so that is out for us,” he said.

IT: missed both the crash and the recovery

The fund had no significant IT exposure over the past six to twelve months, meaning it avoided the sharp sell-off that followed concerns around cloud spending and the Anthropic-related announcements. However, it also missed the subsequent recovery. A token 2–2.5% position in Infosys has since been initiated, but Vora acknowledges the fund “has not been a part of the IT trade at all.”

Gold: from conviction to caution

In the multi-asset book, gold has been a major holding for 18 months, peaking at 35% of the portfolio. That position has been trimmed to around 30% as conflicting signals emerge: rising bond yields and a stronger dollar weigh against bullion, even as inflation fears and geopolitical tensions provide support. Vora describes gold as now being in a “transition and reset phase” — still a strategic hedge, but no longer a one-way trade.

“Gold is probably one of the only assets where people can book profits right now — so profit-booking is playing out,” says Vora.

The dominant factor: value with low volatility

Across every sector and theme, the unifying thread in PL Asset Management’s portfolio is a quant-driven preference for value stocks with low volatility and high quality. This factor, Vora says, has been the standout performer in Indian markets for the past 12–14 months — outperforming both momentum and growth plays. It is this discipline, as much as any specific stock call, that the fund credits for its outperformance.