Trevor Stirling & team, Sanford C. Bernstein
The buy side says: “Trevor understands the industry better than most.”
The Sanford C. Bernstein trio shepherded by Trevor Stirling repeats in first place, impressing investors with research that clients describe as both “in-depth industry work” and “detailed, segment-level company analysis” on the six outfits the London-based team covers. Before joining Bernstein in 2004, Stirling worked for five years as a marketing strategist at London-based beverage distributors Guinness and Diageo and established his own wine business, Stirling Wines. The 50-year-old analyst believes that this background has helped him develop a “strong intuition about where to dig deeper to find the really important issues” — not to mention build a thick Rolodex of contacts. Buy-siders see the benefits of this résumé too: “Trevor has a depth of industry experience that is a true asset to investors,” says one. Stirling sees “very attractive long-term growth” for the sector, predicting a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent over the next five years, with a lot of the boost coming from emerging markets. (In 2011 the sector gained 5.1 percent, while the broad market fell 12.2 percent.) Over the nearer term the team’s favorite stocks are Denmark’s Carlsberg and Holland’s Heineken, breweries that “face the toughest headwinds in 2012 but also should see the greatest upside in 2013 as input-cost headwinds reverse,” he says.
