ALL-STAR ANALYSTS
Tim Storey
FORTUNE
Monday, June 11, 2001
Goldman Sachs
Hong Kong Telecommunications
Tim Storey is a rarity. Despite being formally trained as an economist (at the University of Western Ontario), he understands business--even a hard one like telecommunications in Asia. The 33-year-old Canadian has been with Goldman Sachs since 1996 and leads its eight-person Asia telecom team. Telecom in Asia is not only affected by global sentiment toward the industry but deeply rooted in the often opaque and always unique political and regulatory environments of each country. Country-specific analysis, Storey says, is essential; his own specialties are Hong Kong and China.
In a way, Storey remarks, the tight correlation between price movements of Western telecom stocks and Asian ones makes his job a bit easier. Asian telecom companies do not share some of the glaring weaknesses of their Western counterparts--gross overbidding for 3G licenses and high debt loads, for example--so the Asian stocks have been mindlessly oversold. Last year Storey recommended two such stocks, Asia Global Crossing and China Mobile, after they tumbled and before they rebounded. And a couple of months ago he recommended China Unicom--since up 60%.
Storey's great advantage, says one telecom consultant, is that he manages to get unusually close to the inner workings of the companies he covers. That takes patience, especially in China. To get a piece of information that in America could be obtained from an SEC filing, Storey says, you might have to ask ten people, many (suppliers, competitors, even--God forbid--journalists) outside the company.
One company Storey has not gotten close to is Hong Kong's Pacific Century CyberWorks, the brainchild of Richard Li. The company was off limits to him for a year after Goldman's corporate-finance boys unceremoniously dumped SingTel as a client to take up PCCW's cause in its successful bid for Hong Kong Telecom. That may have been a bullet dodged for Storey: Coverage of PCCW by every significant investment house was egregiously overoptimistic last year. (About 90% of its market cap has since been wiped out.) Of the 25 telecommunications firms Storey covers, Goldman has a corporate-finance relationship with only a handful, and his ratings are balanced with a mix of recommendations. But whether or not Storey's clients feel they must triangulate from Goldman's corporate-finance reputation, they know he knows what he's writing about.
Source: Tempest Consultants Ltd.
fortune.com |
