World’s best tech companies on fire
Investors wrongly assumed the world's leading edge technology companies were in the western world, when they were in Korea and Taiwan, according to BT Investment Management's boutique fund manager, JOHCM.
J O Hambro Capital Management (JOHCM)'s senior portfolio manager, James Syme said Korea and Taiwan had grown leading, global scale technology businesses like Tawian Semiconductor and Samsung, which were some of the best companies in the world.
Notwithstanding that, he said such businesses would also not likely be affected by the Trump presidency.
"We find those markets particularly Korea, very attractively valued".
Despite Samsung Electronics' becoming infamous for the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone catching fire, Samsung remained one of JOHCM's highest conviction holdings, he said.
Samsung's IT and mobile division alone produced KRW$8.2 trillion (Korean won (KRW)) in operating profit and KRW$54.2 trillion in revenue, while their semiconductor products generated KRW$23.2 trillion in revenue.
He said the impact of the Note 7 was very limited and their forward growth estimates were 15 per cent per year, yet the stock was very cheap.
But Samsung was not the only leading businesses he found attractive. He said Korean, Taiwan and Chinese businesses had the best technology in the world, and they were not just reliant on cheap labour.
"The pressure to bring jobs back to the United States that we have been seeing, as a result of the Trump Presidency, is not an option in the electronics space".
"The network of companies is China, Korean and Taiwan is so deep it would not be practical to move to the United States".
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