Abakkus Asset Manager

Funds managed

Fund nameAsset ClassLicense
Abakkus Emerging Opportunities Fund
Abakkus Growth Fund
Equity 

Hedge Fund
SEBI AIF Cat 3                               

SEBI AIF Cat 3

About the AMC

  • Abakkus Asset Manager LLP is an investment management company which was founded by Sunil Singhania in May 2018.
  • Key staff :
  • Sunil Singhania : Prior to Abakkus, in his role as Global Head – Equities at Reliance Capital Ltd., he oversaw equity assets and provided strategic inputs across Reliance Capital Group of companies including asset management, insurance, AIF and offshore assets. And as CIO – Equities, Singhania led Reliance Mutual Fund equity schemes to be rated amongst the best. Reliance Growth Fund grew over 100 times in less than 22 years under Singhania’s leadership. Furthermore, he led Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management Ltd.’s international efforts and was instrumental in launching India funds in Japan, South Korea, and the UK, besides managing mandates from institutional investors based in the US, Singapore, and other countries. Singhania was the Promoter of The Association of NSE Members of India; a body of stock brokers. He is also the first individual from India to be elected as a member of the CFA Institute Board of Governors and currently serves as the Chair of the Investment Committee and as a member of the Nominating Committee. He also sat on CFA Institute’s Standards of Practice Council for six years, and was the Founder of the Indian Association of Investment Professionals (now CFA Society India) and served as its President for eight years. Singhania graduated in commerce from the Bombay University and completed his Chartered Accountancy from the ICAI, Delhi with an all India rank. He has also earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, conferred by CFA Institute.
  • Aman Chowan:  He has over 17 years of Indian equity experience. Prior to joining Abakkus he was Portfolio manager for all local and offshore schemes for the PMS division of Reliance Asset Management. Having worked at the Singapore office of Reliance, Aman brings along a regional and global perspective in investing and has a strong track record across – benchmark, absolute long and long-short strategies. Before joining Reliance in 2005 he was associated as research analyst with TAIB securities, Tata TD waterhouse and other brokerage firms. Aman holds an MBA degree from Mumbai University.

Investment Philosophy (for firm)

According to the Founder there is no one way to discover a stock. “It is not mathematics. It is the combination of multiple things.”

The firm does follow a framework known as MEETS, an acronym for management, earnings, events, timing and structure. That’s the firm core philosophy in stock selection.

Fund Managers and Research Analysts also go through the past history of a company and runs various models for stock selection. They continuously meet companies. And then also, they do secondary research. So it is a combination of a lot of these things put together.

That approach helped Singhania spot big opportunities like Bajaj Finance and Eicher Motors early.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/the-ca-whose-focus-is-on-mastering-the-art-of-generating-alpha-on-dalal-street/articleshow/72178701.cms

The name Abakkus is inspired by the English word, Abacus, which refers to a “simple instrument used for computing”. Ideology of Abakkus Asset Managers is to Keep things simple, believe in the basics, and focus on the fundamentals and numbers.

Fund Strategy

Abakkus Emerging Opportunities Fund is Category 3 Long Only AIF. The fund started on 6thJuly, 2019, and is a closed-end AIF. Abakkus Emerging Opportunities AIF follows the 15: 15: 15 Rule which basically means greater than 15% ROE, greater than 15% Earnings, and PE lesser than 15. It targets to invest in a diversified portfolio of 30 to 40 listed companies up to 5000 cr of market capitalization with no exposure to unlisted securities. The broader theme of this fund is that new themes start small and eventually grow into big opportunities. India is an emerging country and new sectors and themes emerge regularly, these sectors and companies in them begin small eventually gain scale and become large. This represents a huge opportunity if the right companies are chosen. Rerating is seen as a driver for growth whereby it is believed that companies that might have seen rating contraction due to performance-based inconsistencies are likely to see significant re-rating once the market starts seeing stability in performance.

https://pmsaifworld.blogspot.com/2020/01/pms-aif-world-abakkus-emerging.html

Media

  1. Title : Optimism and confidence are key to success in equity market: Sunil Singhania

Feb 14, 2020

Platform: Zee Business

Link: https://www.zeebiz.com/india/news-optimism-and-confidence-are-key-to-success-in-equity-market-sunil-singhania-119961

Summary: Sunil Singhania, Founder, Abakkus Asset Manager LLP, speaks about the lessons that he learned from the equity market in 30 years, ways to create money from the market, need of being optimistic, when and how to invest and opportunities in the market among others during a candid chat with Anil Singhvi, Managing Editor, Zee Business. 

  1. Title : Value will take precedence over growth in next 1-2 years

Jan 03, 2019

Platform: Economic Times

Link: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/expert-view/value-will-take-precedence-over-growth-in-next-1-2-years-sunil-singhania-abakkus-asset-manager/articleshow/67362703.cms?from=mdr

Summary: In the interview Mr. Singhania makes a financial projection for the next 1-2 years. He expects earnings for FY20 to inch up to 20% plus in terms of growth. He also believes that an equity investor should be optimistic as financial markets has seen many challenges over the last few years and these will continue. He thinks that is the essence of life. His view is that over the next one two years, value will take precedence over growth. Companies which have been slowly growing but have not seen rapid growth have been ignored by the investors and a lot of those companies are on the mid and small cap side. Moving towards them can be a sustainable addition to the balance sheet in terms of strength, in terms of their cash and the high PE.

Analyst questions

Q1) To be a successful investor over the long term, we believe it is critical to understand, and hopefully overcome, common human cognitive or psychological biases that might lead to bad decisions and investment mistakes. How can most investment professionals (and end investors too) avoid those biases?

Q2)  Since this is a Long Only AIF, how do fund managers manage or mitigate competitive risk from other asset managers ?

Q3) What makes you so hopeful? 2020 feels like it’s full of uncertainties — be it on crude oil or COVID -19 situation. Will investors be willing to pay a higher price for shares? Are we going to witness earning recovery from the next quarter? 

Prepared by Rishabh

Reviewed by Rashika Bhatia

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