MindTree among 3 top picks: Daljeet Singh Kohli | Economic Times

Daljeet Singh Kohli, CIO, Stockaxis.com, says KPIT, Birlasoft and MindTree are his favourite stocks when it comes to the IT basket. Edited excerpts from an interview:Is it time to relook at disinvestment candidates? I think the move related to disinvestment has already been factored in most of the stocks, especially BPCL and Concor. This has been going on for almost a year now; it took more time than what was expected.From here onwards, the next move we have to watch out for will be the kind of valuations they command and do they really get what the market is expecting. In case of Concor, people are trying to compare it with Adani Ports. Those who have already entered in at lower levels last year or who have been waiting for patiently, it is time to partially book some profits and wait for some more gains. For fresh entry, we will have to wait for some more trigger points. So we are not suggesting any new buys on this stock.What is your outlook on how investors should approach SBI at the current level?We are positive on SBI. A couple of months ago, we had added SBI in our portfolio. We did not take it as a PSU theme but as a theme of turnaround in the economy. Many of the legacy issues are getting resolved. The National Asset Reconstruction Company was announced in the Budget. It will benefit all public sector banks, whether small or big. The bigger you are, the more beneficial it is because you are stuck with much larger number of bad assets. Banks are already talking of how much books they will be cleaning through that. SBI, in particular, has been performing well. They reported a good set of numbers in the last quarter. Their asset quality has actually improved, in line with the earlier guidance given by the management. So we like this stock and it has been in our portfolio for the last 2-3 months. The potential is huge because valuations are in its favour. All these cleaning up of balance sheets will also benefit them. The only issue in banks is the performance in the two months of April and May and so we are not adding fresh now. We want to see what happens in the June quarter numbers. July would be a better time to look at banks. The preference is towards ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and SBI. These are the three banks that are there in our portfolio right now.What is your outlook on the IT basket? What would be the pecking order if we were to look at the largecaps?In the IT space, we are constructive on both midcaps and largecaps. In fact, the preference right now is more towards the midcap space, especially the ones with niche offerings. In the last 2-3 months, we have added KPIT Technologies, BirlaSoft, Firstsource Solution. On the largecap side, we have Infosys, TCS and MindTree in our portfolio. The stocks reacted negatively after the quarterly results because the market had lot more expectations. We used that opportunity as an entry point. We feel that this is a long story as most people are going for cloud-based services. Right now, KPIT, Birlasoft and MindTree are our top picks.