FUND VIEW - Transamerica buys sector leaders
Reuters Story - April 08, 1998 19:42
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NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuters) - Transamerica Investment
Services portfolio manager Philip Treick said on Wednesday his
strategy was to buy shares of the leading and often biggest
companies in specific industries, for his $32 million fund.
"The nature of our mutual fund is to identify leaders in
the industry," Treick told Reuters in an interview. "We don't
buy the group, we buy the leaders in the group...We try to
identify companies with a scale advantage versus their
competitors."
The dominant companies were often more profitable and grew
faster compared to their rivals, he said.
Among the fund's largest holdings are Dell Computer Corp
, Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp ,
leaders in the various segments of the technology market.
"We have a lot of technology," Treick said. "I am not
nervous about technology -- although I would be if I owned
second-tier technology companies -- because the first-tier
companies have defendable margins and opportunities."
But the smaller technology companies did not have "moats"
around their business and were vulnerable to encroachment by
their larger competitors, Treick said.
Among networking companies, Treick owned and vastly
preferred shares of Cisco Systems Inc , because of its
resources and strategy to send voice over the internet. "I
like Cisco but I don't like the other networking companies," he
said. "
The fund, which has risen about 26 percent so far this
year, also has a sizable position in the entertainment industry
through its holdings of Mirage Resorts Inc , digital
animation company PIXAR and auto raceway owner and
operator Speedway Motorsports Inc , he said.
Mirage has been a top gaming stock although Trieck said he
was slightly wary about all of the new capacity in Las Vegas.
Speedway owned and operated motor raceways in all of the
leading media markets in the United States, which gave it a leg
up against rivals in the growing industry, he said.
"Television ratings, attendance and sponsorship dollars are
all going up at the same time," Treick said. "NASCAR racing is
spreading from the southeast to the west...driven by all of
these three things at the same time."
The company has tracks in Dallas, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia,
Charlotte, North Carolina, San Francisco and Bristol, Tennessee
and had solid expansion plans, he said.
PIXAR, which created the popular animated film "Toy Story",
has a recently-renegotiated deal with giant media company
Disney which gives it an advantage against other
competitors in both marketing and distribution, he said.
"PIXAR by itself has no scale but it gets that from
Disney," Treick said. |
