Hoy Kit Mak & team
J.P. Morgan
First-place appearances: 2

Total appearances: 19

Team debut: 1994

J.P. Morgan has earned a position on this lineup in 19 of the 21 years the All-Asia Research Team has been published and captures its third straight second-place finish this year. Hoy Kit Mak’s 11-person troop works out of Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and has expanded its reporting universe over the past year by four stocks, for a total of 49 Malaysian names. Dialog Group is one of the companies the analysts recently added to their sector portfolio, assuming coverage in May 2013 with an overweight rating. They expected new projects to boost earnings for the Petaling Jaya–based provider of engineering services to the petroleum and petrochemicals industries. In September — with the stock down 13.1 percent, to 2.59 ringgit, and trailing the Malaysian broad market by 9.1 percentage points — they urged investors to stay the course, citing Dialog’s exposure to domestic-led growth in infrastructure spending. Sure enough, by late April the share price had recovered to 3.60 ringgit, advancing by 20.8 percent since May and leading the nation’s broad market by 17.6 percentage points. Another preferred name is Kuala Lumpur’s Genting Plantations, which the team began formally tracking last June. Production at the palm oil cultivator was poised to expand, they advised, and the stock was projected to outperform. As of late April, it had done just that. Genting’s shares were up 20.4 percent, to 10.84 ringgit, compared with the Malaysian broad market’s rise of 3.5 percent. “The team provides good regional knowledge and domestic insights through timely strategy and sector research,” affirms one admirer.