Timothy Arcuri |
Timothy Arcuri Citi SECOND TEAM Jay Deahna JPMorgan THIRD TEAM James Covello Goldman Sachs |
After spending last year in second place, Timothy Arcuri of Citi climbs back to the top. The San Francisco–based analyst impresses investors with his “aggressiveness in backing his recommendations,” according to one longtime client. Case in point: Arcuri in March reiterated his long-standing sell on Amkor Technology, a semiconductor-assembly company headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, at $11.24, and he highlighted it again in May, even though the share price had risen to $12.31. Arcuri, 37, thought sentiment on the stock was “far too bullish, given what I thought would happen to chip unit sales,” and he was right. Through mid-September the stock had tumbled to $6.94, a loss of 38.3 percent since March that was well below the sector’s 4.1 percent decline. Newport Beach, California–based Jay Deahna, who slips to second place, “brings together the big picture,” says one backer. Making the case in May that “solar-leveraged semiconductor equipment companies are likely to deliver superior revenue and earnings-per-share growth over the course of the next cycle,” the JPMorgan Securities researcher upgraded Advanced Energy Industries of Fort Collins, Colorado. The stock had outperformed the sector by 19.5 percentage points as of mid-September. James Covello of Goldman, Sachs & Co. finishes in third place for a third year running, winning praise for “diligently looking for data that might prove him wrong, which most people don’t do,” says one money manager. In February, on the belief that the Street was “too early in calling the bottom” of the dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, supply chain, Covello advised investors to sell Novellus Systems of San Jose, California, at $24.00. The share price had fallen 12.5 percent, to $21.00, by mid-September.
Return to The Best Analysts of the Year