JOSHUA PEACH, JONATHAN SHAPIRO AND DANIEL ARBON
Every year, the country’s top equities investors make their way to the Sohn Hearts & Minds Investment Leaders Conference to pitch their best ideas for the year ahead.
As always, it can be hit-and-miss. Last year’s top stock picker Rikki Bannon chose Telix Pharmaceuticals, which makes prostate cancer imaging drug Illuccix. It has risen 150 per cent since.
Last year’s worst? Tribeca Investment Partners’ Jun Bei Liu chose Chinese ]variety store chain Miniso Group. Its shares have slumped a third. Ricky Sandler, of Eminence Capital, suggested a short on printer and cameras group Canon. Shares are up more than 30 per cent.
This year, Sohn was on tour for the third time in its nine-year history. The South Australian government made its own value investment by pumping a rumoured $500,000 into the event, in return for donations for local medical research and the chance to burnish its credentials as an investment hub. The event has raised $70 million for medical research since its launch. “There’s no finer place for the finance festival than in the festival city,” said Matthew Grounds. He, along with fellow Barrenjoey co-executive chairman Guy Fowler and investor Gary Weiss, is one of Sohn’s driving forces.
…
Eli Lilly and Company
Alex Pollak, Loftus Peak
A fund manager who specialises in disruption, Pollak names weight-loss drug manufacturer Eli Lilly as his pick of the year. And that’s after the share price more than doubled on the success of drugs that help reduce weight. “Our view is that Lilly is cheap … because no one’s really done the investment arithmetic on what the size of the target addressable market for
Lilly is. Let me tell you, it is absolutely huge,” says Pollak, a former Macquarie banker who invested in hot semiconductor stock Nvidia in 2016.
Developed as a diabetes cure, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound drug is being considered a cure-all for a range of diseases – something Pollak thinks is still being ignored by the wider market.
…
To read the full and original article from the AFR, click here.
Share this Post