Neelkanth Mishra
Credit Suisse
First-place appearances: 0

Total appearances: 2

Analyst debut: 2012

Vaulting from runner-up to No. 2 is Neelkanth Mishra. “He provides differentiated research and fresh thinking on less-analyzed trends,” applauds one client of the Credit Suisse strategist. With the National Stock Exchange of India’s CNX Nifty index range-bound and volatile for much of this year, “some may think there have been no investment opportunities,” Mishra remarks. “But several sectors have done exceptionally well, and several sectors have done exceptionally badly. Going forward, there are a number of exciting sectors with very supportive macroeconomic fundamentals.” Among those is pharmaceuticals, which “still has a lot of room for upside,” he says, and is ripe for market-share gains because “there is no other economy in the world [that] has the kind of infrastructure India has,” including the availability of cheap chemists and several companies with the appropriate scale for operating in various global markets. Another is the energy industry, which boasts strong volume and capacity expansion. “There will be some impact of the domestic weaknesses, but on the whole they are more or less priced in, and all the positive sides are not,” he explains. In addition, he recommends the consumer staples segment, noting that the bottom of the economic pyramid is experiencing structural changes, such as strong wage gains, driven by the spread of cell phone use, rural roads and household electrification. Names that can enlarge their product mixes and distribution reaches will benefit from this evolution and enjoy robust earnings growth over the next several years, Mishra advises, though he cautions that some stocks in this category are expensive. — Carolyn Koo