< The 2014 All-Europe Research Team
The J.P. Morgan Cazenove squad under London-based Andreas Willi, top-ranked for the past three years, slips back to second place. With 46 stocks under coverage, an increase of 12 from a year ago, the team of six has been mostly cautious, owing to poor industrial earnings visibility. In July the analysts downgraded Sweden’s Scania from overweight to neutral. Demand was declining for the truck builder and parts-distribution operator, they advised. Through December the shares fell 10.2 percent, to 122 Swedish kronor, lagging the sector by 24.8 percentage points. Going forward, the team advises underweighting Scania because sales will be soft, the researchers forecast. In a more positive stance, they relaunched coverage of IMI in early December, after a period of restriction, with an overweight rating. The U.K.-based supplier of specialized engineering tools is well positioned to reap rising operating profit margins, they believe. Accordingly, the crew assigned the shares a target price 1,660 pence, an 8.9 percent upside to their year-end 2013 value. |