< The 2016 All-Europe Research Team
Benjamin Fidler
& team
Deutsche Bank
First-Place Appearances: 5
Total Appearances: 14
Team Debut: 2000
Rising from second place, Deutsche Bank reclaims the No. 1 position it held in 2013 and 2014. London-based Benjamin Fidler, 45, oversees the firm’s coverage of European aerospace and defense equities, working with Milene Kerner in Paris. Together they report on 12 names in this space, with “an eagle eye and a hawk-like sense of accuracy,” one client attests. Since December 2014 the analysts have been drawing investors’ attention to the potential upside for Thales, a French maker of civilian and military aerospace equipment such as radar systems and other industrial electronics. They deemed the stock undervalued and named both healthy cash-flow growth and management’s effective cost-savings program as catalysts. Thales’s stock has since performed well, advancing 58.1 percent by the middle of last month, to €68.41, and outperforming its regional peers by 61.6 percentage points. Two additional France-based companies win the Deutsche crew’s favor going forward: Airbus Group and Dassault Aviation. Europe’s largest multinational player in this space, Airbus is attractive thanks to the projected earnings-per-share and free-cash-flow expansion in its commercial operations, the researchers say. Dassault, which manufactures executive and military jets, impresses them with strong management and improved profitability. They assign the shares respective price objectives of €88 and €1,400, which indicates a potential upside of 56.7 percent for Airbus and of 33.7 percent for Dassault, compared with the securities’ trading values in mid-January. “Ben is my go-to source,” a second fund manager says. “He always responds to my questions quickly and intelligently.”