Technology, Media & Telecommunications – Software: First

San Francisco–based Adam Holt, 38, wins top honors for a third straight year. “He has the best sense of where sentiment is tilting,” according to one advocate. The Morgan Stanley researcher made a bold, contrarian move in early January when he named Citrix Systems his top pick for the year, arguing that investors were underestimating the resilience of the virtual-desktop market and that the Fort Lauderdale, Florida–based company’s product diversity — particularly in application networking and collaboration — was underappreciated. The stock bolted 24.7 percent, from $62.30 to $77.69, and bested the sector by 11.3 percentage points, through August. Holt is upbeat on the sector’s prospects. “We are seeing the strongest set of secular demand drivers in a decade, which is in turn driving a wallet-share shift in IT spending toward software,” he says. “With high levels of recurring revenue and variable costs, software business models have the unique ability to be both defensive in a tough market as well as offensive — to benefit when spending improves.”