ASK Select

ASK PMS | Equity | | PMS

IME's View on ASK Select

Strategy

Concentrated Top-Ideas based Strategy

Investment Fund

For investors looking for a concentrated portfolio, ASK India Select offers a concentrated strategy with one of the most established teams in the industry. However, we prefer ASK IEP & ASK Growth, given their more consistent longer-term returns.

Fund's Strategy View

Invests in top value-creation ideas identified across more tightly defined strategies. The portfolio maintains a blend of opportunity size, earnings growth, business quality, and price-value gap; with a reasonably concentrated (20 stocks) portfolio. With a 10+ years track record, ASK - India Select has established its credibility by navigating through various market phases and consistently delivering above par returns.

Fund Performance

The fund has underperformed peers & is amongst the worst performing schemes in this category in the last 5 year trailing returns. In terms of longer-term annual performance, performance consistency has been mixed, with the fund having outperformed & underperformed the bechmark roughly in half the years.

IME's View on ASK PMS

View on AMC

ASK is the market leader with a strong investment policy and in-house team. Blackstone acquired a majority stake in their asset management business. Their rating has been downgraded to 4-star due to recent underperformance, but an upgrade to 5-star is possible as performance improves.

AMC's Pedigree

ASK is a leading PMS provider known for delivering sustainable long-term returns with minimal risk. Post Blackstone acquiring a majority stake in ASK in 2022, ASK is now a blackstone company.

AMC Team

Led by Bharat Shah, ASK has a strong and stable investment team which focuses on developing fund managers from their research team aligned with ASK's investment philosophy. While ASK recently lost their long-term CIO Prateek Agarwal to Motilal in Oct-22, they have been able to fill this vacancy with George Joseph joining as the CIO while Sumit Jain (the interim CIO when Prateek left) continuing to play the role of a deputy CIO.

Investment Philosophy

Traditionally ASK followed a GARP investment philosophy (focusing on buying high-qualty businesses, with consistent earnings growth available at the right price). Under George Joseph, this philosophy has been tightened into what they call their FOCUS Philosophy (F - Fundamentals, O - Opportunity Size & Scale, C - Cycles & Capital Allocation, U - Unmatched Moats, S - Safety). The aim is to follow a fundamental-investment philosophy (F - Fundamentals) focused on high-quality companies (U - Unmatched moats) with attractive growth potential (O - Opportunity size) and available at the right valuations (S - Safety), while being aware of underlying business & market cycles (C - Cycles & Capital Allocation).

ASK India Select - Investment Strategy

Concentrated exposure to the ASK's top value-creation investment opportunities.

ASK’s India Select Portfolio invests in the top value-creation ideas that ASK has identified across other more tightly defined strategies. The portfolio tries to maintain a blend between the size of the opportunity, earnings growth, business quality, and the price-value gap.

Key Investment Attributes

Investments in ASK India Select Portfolio are driven by the following key investment attributes:

Size of Opportunity: Size of Pond vs. Size of Fish, Dominance, Resilience, Liquidity
Quality of Business: High quality of business (superior ROCE), Strong moat, Impregnability, Sustainability, Key pivot of strong wealth creation
Earnings Growth: Quantum, Consistency, Durability, Predating (early vs later), Compounding power
Value: Favourable price-value gap, Margin of Safety
Management Quality: Good management quality is a given constant

Strongly followed GARP Philosophy ASK India select essentially follows a GARP (Growth at the Right Price) investment philosophy, along with a strong focus on quality of the business & management. While this strategy is largely generic, what differentiates ASK India Select is the strong adherence to this strategy over the long-term and changing market conditions.

Investment Process

The investment process is driven by a gradual filtering down of companies in a wider universe, based on specific criteria that ASK focuses on:

500: Start with top 500 as per mkt cap
410: PBT above 75 cr for the trailing 4 quarters
206: Subjective evaluation of management quality (integrity, vision, execution, capital allocation and capital distribution)
92: Rigorous filters of minimum of 20% of ROCE (capital efficiency) and min of 15% annual earnings growth over the next 3 to 5 years
20: Finally an investment approach emerges of 20 businesses, representing an optimal blend of the overall characteristics, and adequate diversity, with a minimum margin of safety of 15%

Clearly Defined Investment Process The clear filtering of companies in a larger universe based on criteria of scale, profit sustainability, management quality, profitability levels and earnings growth, helps ASK narrow down a larger investment universe to a smaller ~100 stock universe through which stocks are selected for inclusion into the portfolio

Trailing Performance

	1yr	3yr	5yr	Since Inception
ASK Select	-11.7	7.5	12.8	14.2
S&P BSE 500	-6.6	14.7	19.2	12.5
Alpha over Broad Mkt BM	-5.1	-7.2	-6.4	1.7

Performance as of: 30-Sep-25 | Inception Date: 04-Jan-10 | Performance are post-fees, pre-taxes. Global funds denominated in USD or fund currency.

Investment team

Bharat Shah | 5-star rated FM

Executive Director | 34 yrs Experience | 18 yrs at current firm

Past Experience: Senior FM (Birla MF)

Bharat Shah is a highly respected investments professional, having overseen the growth of ASK PMS to the largest PMS in India over 2 decades. Prior to joining ASK, Bharat Shah was a very well respected equity fund manager at Birla PMS, known for large wealth creation in IT picks. Bharat Shah has been on the board of ASK since 2008.

George Heber Joseph | 4-star rated FM

CIO | 23 yrs Experience | 0 yrs at current firm

Past Experience: JIO BlackRock (CIO), ITI MF (CIO), ICICI Pru (Sr. FM)

George Heber Joseph has been appointed as the new CIO of ASK PMS, bringing with him over 20 years of extensive investment management experience. He played a key role in establishing Jio BlackRock AMC, where he served as CIO, and previously spent more than a decade at ICICI Prudential AMC, managing over USD 2 billion in assets across equity strategies. He has also held leadership roles at ITI AMC. George is a Chartered Accountant and a Management Accountant, with a strong track record in building and managing high-performing investment teams and portfolios.

Sumit Jain | 4-star rated FM

Deputy CIO | 20 yrs Experience | 20 yrs at current firm

Past Experience: First Global (Analyst)

Sumit has been with the ASK group for over 15 years, having started as an analyst to now being responsible for managing portfolios. Prior to joining ASK, Sumit worked as an analyst at First Global tracking the US macroeconomy and the FMCG sector.

Sandip Bansal | 3-star rated FM

Deputy CIO | 22 yrs Experience | 4 yrs at current firm

Past Experience: FM & Head Investment Research (SBI Life), Sell-side Research Analyst (UBS, KIE)

Sandip has 20 years of work experiene (14 of which have been in equity research). Sandip has a strong research & fund management experience, having worked as Fund Manager & Head of Research at SBI Life Insurance prior to joining ASK. Prior to SBI Life, Sandip worked at the sell side with UBS & Kotak Securities. Sandip in a CA and an MBA (IIM-A)