The 2014 All-Europe Research Team: Tobacco, No. 1: Adam Spielman & team

Adam Spielman & team

Citi

First-Place Appearances: 6 Total Appearances: 15 Team Debut: 1986

London-based Adam Spielman and his trio are back on top after a year in third place, planting the Citi flag at No. 1 for the sixth time since 2007. “The good thing about Adam is he can see both the wood and trees,” says one U.K. fund manager. “He knows the detail on tobacco, but he’s able to put it in context of the broader consumer staples too.” Spielman, 47, notes that the tobacco industry is facing “unprecedented weakness in volumes in the European Union, plus some other markets, like Russia.” He attributes the declines to constrained disposable incomes. The crew’s favorite name is U.K.-based British American Tobacco, whose brands include Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike and Pall Mall, among many others. BAT is poised to weather the challenging market better than many of its peers, the analysts contend, thanks largely to the manufacturer’s strong emerging-markets presence. Recommended throughout last year as a buy, the shares advanced 3.7 percent, to 3,238 pence, while the sector inched up 1.9 percent. On the flip side, the team downgraded Swedish Match in February 2013, based on fears that it is set suffer intensifying competition in its two main lines of business: snus smokeless tobacco in Scandinavia and mass-market cigars in the U.S. Through year’s end the stock slumped 12.4 percent, to 206.70 Swedish kronor, trailing the sector by 10.4 percentage points.