< The 2014 All-Europe Research Team

2014-03-tom-johnson-all-europe-research-team-robin-bienenstock.jpg
Robin Bienenstock
& team
Sanford C. Bernstein
First-Place Appearances: 2

Total Appearances: 4

Team Debut: 2011

The Sanford C. Bernstein trio led by Robin Bienenstock rebounds to first place after a year at No. 2. The analysts are very bullish on the sector, which beat the broad market by 14.7 percentage points last year, soaring 32.8 percent. They cover 17 stocks and have plans to add a few more names this year. One particularly beaten down company they have touted since June is Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications services provider Royal KPN. At the time, the Bernstein crew deemed the market too bearish on the stock operationally. They highlighted that stance late in October, advising that consensus opinion was still too pessimistic about KPN’s medium-term prospects. Sure enough, by the end of the year, the shares had rocketed 60.3 percent, to €2.34, outdistancing the sector by 35.8 percentage points. “We think investors should be long on a basket of incumbents — in particular KPN, [Telecom Italia] and Oi — as a number of deals and trends come to fruition in 2014,” says Bienenstock, 45. “Incumbents will benefit from four big themes: in-market consolidation; fiber deregulation and the successful delivery of much higher broadband speeds on lower-cost fiber-to-the-node over copper technologies; cost transformations from convergence and simplification; and fourth-generation wireless.” Her group is less keen on the prospects for wireless-only players, she says, and believes valuations for cable operators are “pretty full.”

See also Robin Bienenstock's profile in the 2013 All-Europe Research Team and 2012 All-Europe Research Team.