Colin McCallum & team
Credit Suisse
First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 10

Team debut: 2000

Colin McCallum pilots his seven-strong Credit Suisse crew up to No. 3 after four years at runner-up. “He generates interesting arguments for his calls,” observes one backer. Currently, those recommendations are dictated by “the competitive and regulatory environment market by market and on valuation stock by stock,” says Hong Kong–based McCallum, whose teammates are posted in Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney. Among Chinese players, the researchers favor China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom (Hong Kong). The former, assigned a target price of HK$4.26, enjoyed “reasonably strong” earnings growth in the fourth quarter of 2013 and has suffered from “unduly heavy” share price declines, he notes. The latter, tagged with a price objective of HK$18.40, is still demonstrating good monetization of its 3G network, they advise. These stocks were trading at HK$4.26 and HK$10.24, respectively, late in April. In addition, McCallum advises, because “the sell-off in the South Korean market also creates an opportunity, particularly since the Korean operators already generate a high proportion of revenue from ‘bundled’ packages,” both LG Uplus Corp. and SK Telecom Co. are now among the group’s top picks. Lastly, the team recommends Thailand’s Intouch Holdings, believing that regulatory cost savings will outweigh rising market activity, while the discount at which it trades relative to its listed parts will narrow.