< The 2015 All-America Research Team
Stephen Kim
Barclays
First-place appearances: 0
Total appearances: 11
Analyst debut: 2001
For a second straight year, Stephen Kim secures the No. 2 position on this lineup, winning praise from one investor for his “responsive client service.” The 46-year-old Barclays analyst reports on 22 companies in this space and is bullish on Calhoun, Georgia’s Mohawk Industries, a provider of flooring for use in commercial and residential construction worldwide. In fact, he has been urging investors to overweight the name since resuming coverage more than two years ago, at $111.58, crediting its exposure to the recovering U.S. housing market. Also supportive of Kim’s positive stance is Mohawk’s growing European ceramics business. The stock advanced 42 percent during the 12 months through mid-September, to $202.19 — besting the broad market by 44.6 percentage points — and the researcher projects a rise to $220. He is far less sanguine on the prospects for KB Home of Los Angeles. In January 2014, Kim advised clients that the starter-home developer was facing decelerating order growth and sliced his rating on its shares from equal weight to underweight, at $17.84. They had tumbled to $14.71 by the middle of last month, for a loss of 17.5 percent during a period in which the S&P 500 climbed 9.4 percent. “Stephen has invaluable insights into the health of the industry and underlying housing fundamentals,” observes another supporter.