PACRA Maintains Stability Rating of ABL Income Fund

ABL Income Fund (or the “Fund”) is a medium-risk profile Fund. The objective of the fund is to earn a competitive risk-adjusted rate of return by investing in a blend of short, medium, and long-term fixed-income and debt instruments. At the end of Dec'23, the Fund had allocated ~23.97% in TFCs/Sukuks, around ~41.49% in cash deposit, and ~14.11% invested in PIBs. At the end of Dec'23, the credit quality of the Fund was 41% in the AAA category and 30% in the A+ category. The duration of the Fund stood at 50 days at the end of Dec’23, limiting exposure to interest rate risk. The WAM of the Fund stood at 475 days at the end of Dec’23, exposing high credit risk. At the end of Dec’23, the unit holding pattern of the fund stood at ~83.02% representing the top ten investor concentration out of which ~79.8% is of related party exposure, hence, giving rise to a very high level of redemption pressure. During the month of Dec’23, ABL Income Fund posted an annualized return of 19.66% against the Benchmark return of 22.54% thereby underperforming the Benchmark by 568bps.
Going forward, any material changes in the investment policy and/or compliance with the rating criteria for the assigned rating would have an impact on the ratings.

About the Entity
Incorporated in 2007, ABL AMC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Allied Bank Limited (ABL). ABL operates with 1,400 plus branches including 117 Islamic banking branches, 8 Digital/ Self Service branches & 2 overseas branches. ABL AMC possesses licenses for asset management, pension management and investment advisory services. As the leading private sector asset management and investment advisory Company in Pakistan, offerings include a comprehensive range of both Conventional and Shariah Compliant investment solutions across all major asset classes. Assets under management of the Company stood at ~PKR 169.79bln at the end of Dec'23.