KARACHI, June 20: National Investment Trust (NIT) — the country’s largest mutual fund, with Rs78 billion under management -- has outperformed the stock market by seven per cent in the first six months since January this year, Mr Tariq Iqbal Khan, chairman and managing director of the NIT, told Dawn on Wednesday.

He referred to the fund’s growth at 42 per cent compared to the KSE-100 index gain of 35 per cent during the period. He said he was quite satisfied with the fund’s performance for the year to end-June.

As new reporting season draws near, the NIT would be among the first to unveil financial figures for 2006 in the first week of July.

In reply to a query regarding payout, which is of paramount interest to investors, the NIT chief merely commented that it had been the “tradition of the NIT to distribute improved dividends each year to its unit-holders and the fund is likely to keep up the tradition this year as well.”

He would say no more, as he darted off to attend an urgent meeting.

Most analysts said they would be happy with a maintained record payout of Rs5.80 per unit that was distributed by the NIT last year.

Analyst Atif Malik at JS Capital said in a report released on Wednesday that the past dividend payout policy of the NIT had been pretty aggressive, as it had distributed more than 90 per cent of its profits as dividends in the last four years (2003-06).The analyst commented that the fund would have benefited from realised gains in the fourth quarter of the financial year 2007.

The NIT could be sitting on a mountain of cash as it received healthy cash flows from three major block sales.

On its holdings of 1.76 million shares in Lakson Tobacco, which was acquired by Philip Morris International at Rs666.89 per share in March, the NIT’s share of proceeds amounted to Rs1.174 billion.

In two other transactions, those of acquisition of Prime Bank by ABN Amro at Rs54 a share, NIT’s receipts worked out at Rs1.916 billion on shareholding of 35.48 million shares and the PICIC buyout by the NIB Bank in May at Rs78 per share, should have brought a windfall of Rs4.285 billion to the fund on its equity stake of 54.93 million shares in PICIC.