White Oak Capital Management

About 

White Oak Capital Management Consultants LLP was incorporated on 06 June 2017 in Mumbai.  

The company is a registered LLP(LLP-AAJ-6257) that is a portfolio manager(INP000005865), an investment advisor(INA000008659) and investment manager to the SEBI registered category III. 

White Oak Capital is also the sponsor and investment manager to the registered Category III AIFs. They are White Oak India Equity Fund(IN/AIF3/17-18/0498)(II-IN/AIF3/18-19/0634) and White Oak India Select Equity Fund( IN/AIF2/19-20/0676)

Key staff

Prashant Khemka is the founder of the company and also the fund manager of White Oak India Pioneers Equity. He holds 51% of the ownership of the company along with Ritu Khemka who holds 48.99% of the ownership and Mayadevi Khemkha who owns 0.01% of the company. Prior to this, he was the MD and the CIO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He worked there for almost 21 years. He has done his MBA from Vanderbilt University and B.E. in mechanical engineering from Sardar Patel College of Engineering, University of Mumbai.  LinkedIn profile

Aashish Sommaiyaa is the CEO of the company with an experience of 20 years in the industry. He is responsible for strategizing, growing and managing the operations of the company. Prior to this, he was the MD and CEO of Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company for 7 years and Senior vice president of ICICI Prudential AMC for 4 years. He has done his MMS in finance from NMIMS and Being Polymers from Maharashtra Institute of Technology. LinkedIn profile

Funds managed

Fund nameAsset classLicense
White Oak – India Equity Portfolio Multi-cap fundPMS
White Oak – India Pioneers Equity Portfolio Long only multi-cap fundPMS

White Oak – India Equity Portfolio is a multi-cap fund, information about which is yet to be found.

White Oak – India Pioneers Equity Portfolio is a long only multi-cap fund, the date of inception of which was 09 April 2019. It is managed by Prashant Khemka. The total corpus of the fund as of 28th Feb 2021 was INR 1511 crores. The strategic benchmark of this fund is BSE 500 and the return is calculated using the TWRR method. The minimum investment amount required starts from INR 1 crore that equates to US$ 137 thousand. 

According to PMS AIF World as of 28 February 2021, the number of stocks in their portfolio was 48 and the market cap allocation was 56.30% in large cap stocks, 31.80% in mid cap stocks, 9.30% in small cap stocks and 2.60% in cash. Their portfolio PE was 22.7. Their portfolio PE was 68.18. With the use of the data provided by PMS AIF World, a few comparative charts have been created to show the sectoral allocation of the PMS and performance of the PMS as compared to its benchmark. A table for the portfolio holdings is also shown below. 

The above figure shows the Sectoral allocation as of 28/02/2021.

The above figure shows the performance as compared to the benchmark as of 28/02/2021.

Top 5 portfolio holdings table sourced from PMS AIF World(Holdings as of 28th February 2021)

Investment philosophy

White Oak – India Pioneers Equity Portfolio

Philosophy

The objective of the fund is to achieve a long term capital appreciation. They believe that outsized returns are earned overtime by investing in great businesses at attractive values. White Oak – India Pioneer Portfolio tries to maintain a balanced portfolio of select companies that are challenging the benchmark and to ensure that alpha selection is a function of stock selection. They also try to consciously avoid market timing and stock rotation. The media link below shows that the firm believes that the markets as a whole are generally fairly valued and that timing the market us next to impossible. This hints that the PMS is actively managed. The fund has a horizon of medium to long term. 

Style

According to the analysts understanding, there is a mix of value and growth investing since both finding undervalued stocks and businesses with potential is mentioned. However, anything about the fund following a particular style of investing is not mentioned. 

Process

The PMS uses a long only bottom up approach of stock selection. A great business according to the company is one that is well managed, scalable and generates superior returns on incremental capital. These are the parameters that are checked by the company during stock selection but how these are used is not clear. They also look at a stock which is at a substantial discount to the intrinsic valuation formulated by the company as attractive. The company believes in a strong stock selection process rather than betting on macros. The portfolio construction at the company  believes in having a good balance of pro-cyclicals like real estate and counter-cyclical companies like pharma. They also try to understand, monitor and contain residual factor risks that are a by-product of stock selection. The fund gives a higher weightage to large caps. About the economic point of view, nothing clear is given except that they try to avoid market timing.  

Media

Steering Equity Portfolio Through The Path Crowded with High Valuations, PMS AIF World Summit, 5 Feb 2021.

Prashant Khemekha in this interview with PMS AIF World talks about the manner in which his company avoids market timing and his beliefs about the markets. He talks about how the interest rates have gone down today leading to the increase in equity multiples that led to higher valuations. He also talks about how White Oak Capital Management focuses on stock selection and portfolio construction. 

Analysts questions

  1. How do you quantify good management and scalability of a potential business that you want to invest in your portfolio?
  2. How do you come upto the intrinsic value of a stock? What valuations do you use? 
  3. How do you analyse the industry of the business and the economic conditions before investing? 
  4. While doing an analysis of the company’s financials, what is something that makes you the most interested in the company?   
  5. What is your exit strategy considering that you do not want to time the market? 
  6. What do you believe about the valuations of real estate considering it is difficult to estimate their fair market value? 

Prepared by – Madhav Patel 

Date – 22 March 2021

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