< The 2015 All-America Research Team
Tien-Tsin Huang
J.P. Morgan
First-Place Appearances: 2
Total Appearances: 8
Analyst Debut: 2008
J.P. Morgan’s Tien-Tsin Huang headlines this list for a second consecutive year. He reports on 27 companies in this space and plans to initiate coverage on more names by the end of the year. “The group tends to outperform the market and is on track to outperform again in 2015,” he says, “driven by strong secular trends; a favorable pricing environment; a bias toward outsourcing, given client regulation concerns; and low disintermediation risk.” As a result, the 40-year-old researcher has a positive outlook for U.S. computer services and information-technology consulting companies — though he cautions that “we see a high execution bar set for the second half of 2015, given high valuations. But we think valuations can hold, given stable growth, M&A potential and the flight-to-safety characteristics inherent in the group.” One name he recommends highly is Atlanta-based Global Payments, which is among the world’s leading transaction processing services providers. In January, Huang raised his rating on the stock from neutral to overweight, largely crediting the company’s above-average earnings upside potential from repricing and acquisitions. By the middle of last month, it had soared 34.4 percent, to $113.74, outperforming the sector by 31.9 percentage points. Given his long experience tracking these names, one fund manager says, the J.P. Morgan analyst “has the best understanding of the business models and management teams.”