Telecommunications: Data Networking & Wireline Equipment

Ehud Gelblum

First Team

Ehud Gelblum

JPMorgan

Second Team

Jeffrey Evenson,Sanford C. Bernstein

Third Team

Nikos Theodosopoulos,UBS

Runners-Up

Tal Liani,Merrill Lynch; Timothy Long,BofA; Timothy Luke,Lehman

On top for a second straight year, Ehud Gelblum, 38, “does a very good job of communicating incremental changes in stock opinion via his monthly ‘Shades of Gray’ report, in which he moves stocks up and down via a point system,” says one portfolio manager, to which the JPMorgan Securities analyst responds: “I believe life is more complicated than overweight, underweight and neutral.” Still, there was nothing complicated when Gelblum, who is No. 1 in Telecom Equipment/Wireless, upgraded Juniper Networks to buy last November 2006, at $20.48, based on the Sunnyvale, California–based company’s array of new products. Through mid-September the stock soared to $35.61, a gain of 73.9 percent, against the sector’s 8.9 percent advance. A “very solid knowledge of technology,” according to one client, lifts Sanford C. Bernstein’s Jeffrey Evenson from runner-up to second. That wisdom was on display in his much-praised May 2006 report, “IP Video: The Killer Application for Data Networking Equipment,” in which Evenson concluded that companies offering high-demand Internet protocol video were positioned to accelerate earnings and upgraded Cisco Systems, in recognition of the San Jose, California–based company’s IP video offerings. By mid-September 2007, Cisco’s stock had risen 57.4 percent. Nikos Theodosopoulos, who repeats in third, has a “keen sense of how the big-picture trends impact the individual players,” explains one money manager. Clients also value the UBS analyst’s monthly “Global Telebits” report, which tracks capital spending and other sector developments.