< The 2015 All-Europe Research Team

Total appearances: 34

Team debut: 1986

In its strongest showing since 2005, Credit Suisse advances from the runner-up position it earned in 2011 through 2014 to claim second-place honors. Justin Funnell leads a London-based troupe of four that earns investors’ respect with its “long-standing sector experience and unique understanding of the sector dynamics,” as one fund manager attests. In particular, another backer adds, “Justin again has proven that his long experience helped him to call the European mobile data growth story at the right time.” Funnell and his colleagues, who report on 25 telecommunications services stocks, remain positive on their sector. Their overriding theme for 2015 is to prefer companies whose exposure is concentrated in regional rather than international markets. “We expect European mobile revenues to continue to recover, approaching stability in 2016,” they advised in their January year-ahead report. “We expect mobile price erosion to continue to slow, driven by the prices of an increasing number of the challengers approaching a marginal cost floor.” In addition, the researchers forecast that accelerated adoption of fourth-generation wireless technology will result in half of smartphones employing that standard by the end of this year, “driving demand for bigger data bundles. Taken together, this is likely to bring a continued improvement in [year-over-year] trends for European mobile revenues.” Accordingly, they expect outperformers this year to include Britain’s BT Group, Deutsche Telekom of Germany, the U.K.’s Liberty Global, Royal KPN of the Netherlands, Telekom Austria and U.K.-based Vodafone Group.