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Navin Killa
& team
Morgan Stanley
First-Place Appearances: 6

Total Appearances: 17

Team Debut: 1996

Morgan Stanley rises from second place to win top honors on this list for the first time since 2005, before Navin Killa assumed leadership of the squad. The six researchers work out of Hong Kong, Mumbai, Seoul and Sydney, garnering praise for their “extremely detailed earnings models and overall excellence with the numbers,” as one fund manager puts it. Their view on the prospects for Asia’s telecommunications shares became conservative in the middle of last year, says Killa, 39, because “increasing competition, declining prices and cannibalization from over-the-top [applications] put pressure on revenue growth.” In addition, interest rate increases in the U.S. and other developed markets are weighing on dividend yields, a key valuation benchmark for the sector, he notes. Since they became more cautious, the sector has fallen 5.4 percent, through late April, trailing the region’s broader market by 14.6 percentage points. The analysts prefer stocks in India, Indonesia and the Philippines because data penetration is low and competition is improving after two to three years when smaller operators struggled with funding in a rising-cost-of-debt environment. They also like Singapore’s telecoms, citing steady price increases, managed competition and a focus on rewarding shareholders via dividends. Names that earn buy ratings from Killa and his crew include China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom (Hong Kong). These Chinese carriers will eventually obtain licenses allowing them to operate in the 4G wireless space, they advise, and are expected to continue gaining market share. Killa joined Morgan Stanley in 2000 after a year spent working as a research associate for telecoms coverage at Lehman Brothers. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.