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Ehud Gelblum | Ehud Gelblum JPMorgan SECOND TEAM Tal Liani Merrill Lynch THIRD TEAM Jeffrey Evenson Sanford C. Bernstein RUNNERS-UP Inder Singh Barclays |
Last year, Ehud Gelblum of JPMorgan Securities was the only analyst to top two sectors: this one and Telecom Equipment/Wireless. He repeats the feat this year. Gelblum, 39, “has the best company models out there — very detailed,” says one investor. Gelblum downgraded long-standing favorite Juniper Networks to neutral in January, at $30.67, citing “the sudden departure of Juniper’s key architect of change,” chief operating officer Stephen Elop. Shares of the Sunnyvale, California–based designer of routers and Internet applications had tumbled to $25.81 by mid-September. Tal Liani of Merrill Lynch, who rises from runner-up to second place, earns praise from one backer for being “skeptical and nonconsensus.” Liani, who is also No. 3 in Telecom Equipment/Wireless, downgraded Juniper to neutral even earlier than Gelblum did, in September 2007, saying the stock’s $36.01 price “was just too expensive and reflected all the upside.” A year later, Juniper had underperformed the sector by 3.9 percentage points. Although he slips one notch to third place, Jeffrey Evenson of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. continues to impress clients with his “forward-thinking pieces” and ability “to comprehensively analyze both established and nascent technologies.” No fan of Juniper either, Evenson downgraded the stock to neutral in November; it had slid 17.3 percent by mid-September.
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