Three capital-efficient market outliers FIIs bought during the 2024 selloff

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The year 2024 was far from stellar for Indian stocks, particularly in retaining foreign investment. Towards the end of the year, as markets experienced a significant correction, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) began pulling their funds from Indian equities.

Calling it a mere withdrawal might be an understatement—it was more of an exodus. Read this | MobiKwik’s IPO: Is this the start of something bigger? FIIs pulled out over $11.5 billion, marking one of the largest outflows in recent memory. This scale of withdrawal aligns with outflows during major global disruptions.

For instance, the 2008-09 financial crisis saw $15.4 billion withdrawn over a 15-month period, and the pandemic-induced uncertainty in early 2020 led to a sharp $10.6 billion outflow within just three months. Amid this widespread retreat, however, a few midcap stocks bucked the trend, quietly attracting fresh investments from FIIs. Here are three such midcaps with impressive ROCE (Return on Capital Employed) that stood out during this period of large-scale outflows.

With a market cap of ₹10,333 crore and FII holding of 13.12% as of September quarter, Mrs Bectors Food Specialities Ltd—India’s largest biscuits exporter—leads this list. FII holding increased significantly from 8.22% in the April-June quarter to 13.12% by the end of the September quarter. Key contributors include the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which acquired a 1.17% stake, and Singapore government, which picked up 1.06%, as per latest shareholding data available with exchanges.