About
Pelican Holdings Private Limited was established in the year 2003 as part of the multi-faceted Pelican Group which has interests across Capital markets and Corporate advisory. For nearly two decades the Pelican Group and its Partners have served as advisors to clients investing across various asset classes. Pelican has served the needs of both Corporate and Ultra High Net-worth Individuals alike.
Pelican PMS is the Portfolio Management Service offered by Pelican Holdings Private Limited, Chennai, India [SEBI Reg No. INP000006891]. Manages Portfolios in Listed Indian stocks (SEBI minimum 50 lakhs), for Individuals / Companies who desire long term wealth creation. Advises on Fixed Income.
Key staff
Deepak Radhakrishnan – Deepak is the portfolio manager of Pelican PMS. He is a seasoned investment professional with over 15 years of experience across equity research and fund management. His earlier assignments include managing mutual funds, private and corporate portfolios in India and abroad.
Fund managed
Pelican-PE Fund – It is a large-cap PMS fund which was started on 13th June, 2018. According to pmsbazaar.com, the AUM of the portfolio is approximately Rs. 50.5 crores. Its investment is based on equity life-cycle which aims at being simple, objective, scalable and non-prognosticative. According to the manager, price to earnings (PE) is a good indicator to gauge the market scenario and arrive at investment decisions. He also believes that understanding the equity life cycle and factors affecting PE are imperative in building a robust investment strategy rather than predicting absolute price levels and timelines.
The PMS offers a Model Portfolio (Regular Portfolio) and two variants – Without ETF & Sharia Portfolio. The holdings are as follows.
Objectives
- Capital preservation
- To generate returns > 3x inflation
- To keep it simple
Strategy
- Pick quality / large-cap market leaders
- Focus on growth and margin of safety
- Provide cost-effective after-tax returns
The PMS adopts a schematic investing strategy. They follow the following steps for successful schematic investing.
- Identify the potential top (2 σ)
- Schematic investment on the downside
- Exit on euphoria (> 2 σ )
- Repeat
Stock selection
- According to Pelican PMS, a diversified index like Nifty is the best measure of systemic risk as it cancels out features unique to stock & sector.
- Large-caps give better entry and exit during high and low risk scenarios. Investing in these high-quality large caps provides the best opportunity for long term, sustainable wealth creation.
- Mid & small-cap companies might offer higher returns at the cost of higher / undefined risks. The PMS is not into the game of stock picking such “HIDDEN GEMS”! They prefer participating in the mid-cap stocks via a broad based mid-cap index.
The performance of the portfolio as compared to the benchmarks is given below. It is not very impressive but in a media interview, Deepak Radhakrishnan said that they believe to make 20-25% CAGR as the next rally gets completed.
Fee structure
The PMS charges 1.5% of AUM as a management fee and a 15% profit share over 10% hurdle rate. They do not charge entry load and exit load for any period. They say that they respect the investor’s choice to move on or switch to another fund.
Investment philosophy
Philosophy
The following is how the investment philosophy is explained on their website.
- Understanding market cycles
- Diversifying meaningfully
- Acknowledging risk of research failure
- Controlling behavioural biases
- Focusing on capital preservation
- Being patient with the long-term process
- Believing in equity being the best wealth creator
- Believing in sustainability and scalability
Process
- Select market leaders.
- Increase/decrease exposure depending on overall market valuation.
- Optimize acquisition cost and cash, by spacing out buying.
- Park unused funds in liquid schemes.
Investment style
Their investment style is of long-term wealth creation. They do not churn but they hold stocks for the duration of a cycle (4 to 7 years). They invest according to the concepts of equity life cycle and dynamic mean reversion.
Media
Deepak Radhakrishnan talks about “Perspective of the portfolio managers & strategies on COVID-19”
“We’ve deployed capital efficiently into the selected large-cap stocks at prices that we have not seen in the last five years. We believe that just by holding this till the next rally gets completed, we would be able to make a return of 20-25% CAGR.”
Analyst questions
- Your investment philosophy has many characteristics of importance. If you’d have to sum it up in 1-2 lines to explain it to a potential client, how would you frame it?
- As you don’t charge an exit load for any period, what is the average period for which investors hold the portfolio and would the period have been different according to you, if you had charged an exit load?
- It is very difficult to find your interactions with any media house. Would you like to explain any reason behind it?
- As you focus on a limited stocks portfolio, how often do you buy new stocks or sell old stocks, how is the capital allocation decided and what does the supporting analysis focus on?
- Your website doesn’t mention the AUM of the portfolio. According to pmsbazaar.com, the AUM is not very high. What is the AUM of the portfolio and how consistently is it growing?
Prepared by Preet Malde
May 2021
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