< The 2014 All-Europe Research Team
After a year at runner-up, Bank of America Merrill Lynch rebounds to the third-place position it held in 2012. London-based Fiona Maclean’s crew maintains coverage on 15 names. In November 2012 the group issued a counterconsensus upgrade of United Arab Emirates–headquartered Lamprell, an oil-rig construction and engineering services provider whose shares trade on the London Stock Exchange. Despite the company’s having issued five profit warnings that year, the analysts believed that Lamprell was primed to move beyond issues deriving from problematic projects. They deemed the shares sufficiently undervalued at 69.25 pence to merit an upgrade from underperform to buy. Eight months later — when the stock had more than doubled, to 145.75p — they reduced it to neutral, citing valuation and concerns about Lamprell’s bidding pipeline. From that July downgrade through December, the shares slipped 3.8 percent, in line with the sector’s decline. Looking ahead, the researchers like the prospects for U.K.-based Petrofac. They expect a surge in new orders for the petroleum-processing facilities provider and applaud Petrofac’s strong earnings visibility and high-quality backlog of business. Team leader Maclean is “a dynamo with a broad-based international perspective that gives her insights no one else has,” affirms one fund manager in Britain. See also Fiona Maclean’s profile in the 2012 All-Europe Research Team. |
