< The 2016 All-Europe Research Team
Sandeep Deshpande & team
J.P. Morgan Cazenove
First-place appearances: 5
Total appearances: 20
Team debut: 1986
J.P. Morgan Cazenove’s duo led by Sandeep Deshpande repeats at No. 3. Monitoring 14 regional technology hardware companies, the London-based analysts see an improving environment for the industry. In September, after semiconductors stocks had tumbled through the summer on the back of high inventories and risks from China, they advised that the resulting sell-off had been overdone and that end markets were not as bad as markets were discounting. Accordingly, they began urging investors to overweight the shares of German manufacturer Infineon Technologies, citing “its 40 percent-plus exposure to the automotive semis space,” recalls Deshpande, 45. By the middle of last month, the stock had advanced 15.7 percent, to €11.19, and outperformed its regional peers by 14.2 percentage points. The researchers remain bullish, assigning Infineon a price objective of €13.80. “At this point, our view on semiconductors has been that 2016 will be better than 2015 as the correction ends,” he reports. “At the same time, new end markets such as automotive, industrial semis will drive the upside, with handset-related semiconductors companies underperforming, as smartphone penetration in developed markets is already very high.”