second team Vijay Jayant Barclays
third team Benjamin Swinburne Morgan Stanley
Sanford C. Bernstein’s Craig Moffett holds the top position for four years running. The 47-year-old analyst is hailed by investors for his “phenomenal stock picks” and “in-depth research.” Moffett thought Time Warner Cable extraordinarily cheap on both a price-to-earnings and a free-cash-flow-yield basis, so he upgraded the New York–based cable and Internet services provider to top pick in January, at $25.50 (adjusted for a subsequent three-to-one stock split and special dividend). The stock shot up 44.8 percent, to $36.92, and bested the sector by 33.6 percentage points, through August. Moffett “has been dead right on the fundamentals for the last eight years,” cheers one fan.
Vijay Jayant of Barclays Capital, holding steady at No. 2, for a third straight year, strikes “a fair balance between broader thematic issues and the devilish details,” extols one investor. In a contrarian call, Jayant elevated Englewood, Colorado–based Dish Network Corp. to top pick in January, at $12.34, despite headline risks such as TiVo litigation and operational performance. The analyst believed the stock to be fundamentally stable and the potential problems already factored into the price, and he was right: The shares had risen 32.2 percent, to $16.31, by late August.
Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan Stanley repeats in third place. Voters applaud his “strong grasp of the underlying technologies and trends” and “outstanding model work.” Swinburne downgraded the sector to neutral in late January, citing rising programming costs that were squeezing margins. Since then it trailed the broad market by 10.5 percentage points, through August.
Click here to see the All-America Research Team rankings.
