Jonah Cheng, Nicolas Gaudois & team
UBS
UBS, co-led by Taipei-based Jonah Cheng and Hong Kong–based Nicolas Gaudois, claims its third straight second-place finish. The five-member team, lauded by one portfolio manager for its “fundamentals information and resourcefulness,” is positive on the market for NAND flash memory (used in smartphones and tablets) because it’s seeing “effectively the best outlook for the sector since 2009,” according to Gaudois, who also co-heads (with Arthur Hsieh) a runner-up squad in Technology/Hardware. Recommended stocks include South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix, which are exercising caution when adding new capacity, resulting in likely undersupply for the rest of this year and most of next year, he explains. Those shares were trading at 1.52 million won and 29,900 won, respectively, in late April, and the analysts believe they will climb to 2.2 million won and 36,500 won. They are neutral on the supply side, Cheng says, because of concerns about whether the next process migration, especially to below 20 nanometers, will “slow down and impact the profitability of the leading companies.” At this point, he notes, capital expenditure efficiency is getting worse and the performance improvement of the 20nm process is also limited. The researchers cover 32 stocks and plan to add four or five more in the year ahead. — Carolynn Koo