About
WhiteOak Capital Asset Management is an investment management and advisory firm established by Prashant Khemka in June 2017. The AMC is a subsidiary of WhiteOak Capital group of companies after having acquired Yes Bank’s Asset Management business in November 2021. With operations across India, Singapore, Mauritius, the UK, and Switzerland, WhiteOak Capital has attracted among the largest Foreign Portfolio Investment inflows into India over the last three years.
WhiteOak group entities collectively have Assets Under Management (AUM) of INR 47,510 crores (~ USD 5.8 billion @ 82 rupees/dollar, March 2023) with a global client base that includes sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, endowments, individuals and family offices investing into India through a combination of separately managed accounts and investment funds.
Key details from financial statements for FY 21-22
| Total Income (INR Crores) | Total Expense (INR Crores) | Profit before tax (INR Crores) | Net Profit/ Loss (INR Crores) | Total Income (USD) | Total Expense (USD) | Net Profit/ Loss (USD) |
| 1.48 | 22.93 | 22.14 loss | 22.14 loss | 0.197 | 3.057 | 2.952 loss |
The sponsor, GPL Finance and Investments Private Limited has over 22 years of experience as an NBFC and is engaged in the activity of investing in the securities market through investments in direct equity securities and units of mutual funds.
Key staff
Prashant Khemka, Founder – Prashant founded WhiteOak Capital Management in June 2017. Prior to this he was the CIO and lead portfolio manager of GS India Equity at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) during March 2007 to March 2017, and also for the Global Emerging Markets (GEM) Equity during June 2013 to March 2017. As a lead portfolio manager, he managed all mutual funds and separate accounts under these strategies. Prashant started his professional investing career in 1998 at SSGA in Boston as senior portfolio officer of Enhanced International equity in the quant group. He started his career at GSAM in 2000 as a research analyst in US Growth Equity, and by 2004 he rose to become Senior Portfolio Manager and Co-Chair of the Investment Committee. He and his fund won several awards including AAA rating from Citywire and Elite rating from Fund caliber among others.
Aashish P Sommaiyaa, CEO – Aashish P Sommaiyaa is responsible for strategizing, growing and managing the operations of WhiteOak Capital. He has over 21 years of experience in business strategy, operations and management, grooming talent, process driven sales and distribution, product development and marketing of investment offerings. He is the former CEO and managing director of Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company Limited. In the past, he has also been responsible for the sales and distribution of one of India’s largest AMCs, ICICI Prudential.
Ramesh Mantri, Chief Investment Officer, Equity – Ramesh Mantri has been the equities investment leader at WhiteOak for about 6 years having joined in 2017. He has more than 20 years of experience. He is qualified as a chartered accountant.
Investment philosophy (for firm)
The firm believes that outsized returns can be earned over time by investing in great businesses at attractive valuations. The firm identifies a great business as one that is well managed, has a scalable long-term opportunity, and generates superior returns on incremental capital along with a strong track record of execution and governance. Assessing valuation is a critical element of their research. It performs in-depth valuation analysis derived from the proprietary ‘OpcoFinco’ framework and intensive fundamental research to identify companies which, they believe, are trading at a substantial discount to their intrinsic value. It tries to build a 360-degree perspective on any business through an extensive schedule of plant visits, meetings with company management, competitors, suppliers, customers and other trade participants.
WhiteOak looks for companies where their estimate of cash flows or earnings, and hence intrinsic value, is significantly different from what the market has priced into the stock. Valuation is attractive when the current market price is at a substantial discount to intrinsic value. It tends to focus on economic free cash flows instead of accounting cash flows and ascribe terminal value based on the greatness of the business.
The investment strategy has a long-term absolute return focus. It prefers a bottom-up approach and generally looks to avoid businesses with weaker characteristics such as poor corporate governance, weak incremental returns on capital and those that face obsolescence risk arising out of technological developments. The focus is on ensuring that alpha generation is purely a function of stock selection. Its aim is to understand, monitor, to contain residual factor risks that are a by-product of stock selection and consciously avoid market timing or sector rotation or other such top-down bets.
Source: White Oak India Pioneers Equity Product Deck April 2023
Media
Whiteoak capital asset management plans to open 100 branches in 12-18 months, Business standard, April 24, 2022 https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/whiteoak-capital-asset-management-plans-to-open-100-branches-in-12-18-mnths-122042400234_1.html
WOC AM is looking to open nearly 100 branches across the country in the next 12-18 months. Also, the company has lined up six different mutual fund products with the first being a flexi-cap fund, followed by an emerging markets fund, a large-cap fund, a mid-cap fund, and an equity-linked saving scheme (ELSS), Prateek Pant, Chief Business Officer at WhiteOak Capital Asset Management, told PTI in an interaction. The company has already filed offer documents with Sebi for the six mutual fund schemes and will launch them as soon as it gets approval from the regulator.
Prashant Khemka on ET Now discussing mantra for a balanced portfolio, Economic Times, April 25, 2022
Prashant Khemka says that when the market is highly volatile, during periods of high inflation and high-interest rates what really matters for the market is how much is already anticipated by the markets and what happens to the longer-term rates-the 10-year, the 30-year. It is not possible for anyone to say where they would ultimately settle. It’s very hard to predict what would happen and when the market would stabilize.
WhiteOak has always advocated to go for companies which generate a lot of cash and that are enjoying some degree of pricing power. WhiteOak looks at companies that generate superior returns on capital, which is a prerequisite for cash flow generation. The second is scalability, which is growth, whether those cash flows can grow substantially or not. Third is good management, execution as well as governance. Cash flow generation and pricing power, are the two fundamental principles of how WhiteOak assesses investments.
From a valuation perspective, the IT sector seems most attractively valued on a price to excess ROIC multiple. It does not look at PE multiples as it believes that they are distorted, misleading and harmful. The team focuses on a cash-flow based valuation approach.
Prateek Pant of WhiteOak reveals OpcoFinco’s framework for stock selection investment mantra before picking stock for investment, Moneycontrol, August 26, 2021, https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/markets/daily-voice-prateek-pant-of-white-oak-reveals-opcofincos-framework-for-stock-selection-7385451.html
WhiteOaks investment philosophy is that outsized returns are earned over time by investing in great businesses at attractive values. It is a stock selection-based approach of investing in businesses rather than betting on macro. The two critical elements of their philosophy are business and valuation.
WhiteOak wants to invest in the companies that present the most compelling combinations of these two elements and to be considered great, a business should possess three attributes: (a) superior returns on incremental capital, (b) scalable, (c) well managed in terms of execution and governance.
How to spot outperformers in challenging times? Ramesh Mantri, CIO explains, Economic Times, March 23, 2022 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/expert-view/how-to-spot-outperformers-in-a-challenging-environment-ramesh-mantri-explains/articleshow/90397643.cms
Post pandemic, the Indian economy has been seeing a very strong broad-based recovery. While certain sectors like consumer, pharma and technology were doing well in the pre pandemic period, 2021 onwards, there has been broad-based recovery even in sectors like commodities, infrastructure, industrials and real estate which has a very large multiplier impact on a number of other industries. Hence, the environment is good for investing and WhiteOak has started seeing some early signs of a capex revival in a number of sectors, particularly metal and cement has started announcing a number of capex.
In terms of where we should look to invest in inflation, the most important is to look at companies and businesses which have pricing power, which have the ability to pass on the inflation to their customers.
Normally in a difficult environment, strong companies emerge stronger and one has to look at companies with a track record of strong execution, market leadership, strong balance sheet and pricing power. Those are the companies WhiteOak has been focusing on across industries.
WhiteOak Capital Group completes acquisition of YES Asset Management, Moneycontrol, November 02, 2021 https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/white-oak-capital-group-completes-acquisition-of-yes-asset-management-7667271.html
GPL Finance and Investments, a subsidiary of WhiteOak Capital group, received capital markets regulator Sebi’s approval to acquire Yes Asset Management from the current sponsor, Yes Bank in September. WhiteOak Group has now successfully integrated Yes Asset Management into its fold, the company said in a statement. We welcome the Yes Asset Management team and their investors as well as channel partners into the WhiteOak family. Together with them we are excited to further build upon the foundation laid by all of us till date, Prashant Khemka, Founder of WhiteOak Capital Group, said.
Prepared by – Charles Mathew, May 2022, updated Bhanu Prakash Dec 2022,
Updated by – Oraina Dsouza, June 2023
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