Barry Dixon & team, Davy
The buy side says: “They are very well connected and dig deep to add value.”
Barry Dixon leads his 20-strong Davy team to the top for the ninth time in 11 years. The Dublin-based researchers, who mark their fourth straight win, are “very good equity analysts, but since the country’s economy has been so decimated, I talk to them on the macro side just to understand what’s going on politically,” explains one investor. Not that the Davy contingent is lacking for winning stock picks. Throughout last year the analysts maintained their outperform rating on Dublin-based gaming company Paddy Power, citing strong global growth prospects. The stock shot up 45 percent in 2011 and outpaced Ireland’s broad market by 29.9 percentage points. This year the team is directing clients toward defensive plays, especially in consumer staples, in anticipation of tepid growth. Current favorites include Kerry Group — a Dublin-based supplier of food additives, which “generates €600 million [$773 million] in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and is well positioned,” the 44-year-old Dixon says, to finance “organic and acquisition-led growth” — and Glanbia, a dairy company headquartered in Waterford that is expanding internationally and poised to make cross-border takeovers.
