Emma Wall: Hello, and welcome to Morningstar. I'm Emma Wall and joining me today to give her three stock picks is Killik & Co's Rachel Winter.
Rachel Winter: Hi, Emma.
Wall: What's your first stock pick today?
Winter: The first one today is Accenture (ACN), which is a massive international consulting business. And the reason that we like them is that they have a huge expertise in technology. So, they are really helping other businesses to deal with technological disruption and that's really a theme that we think will continue to happen over the coming decades. And for us, buying Accenture is probably less risky than taking a view on one individual technology company. So, rather than picking one cloud provider or one cyber security company, if we go for Accenture, we are just taking a view on the fact that we think technology is going to grow over the coming years.
Wall: Technology stocks have become quite expensive over the last couple of years. Has that happened to Accenture or have they avoided that not being a pure technology play?
Winter: It's definitely come up. So, over the last year it has come up about 30%, so quite a rise there. But at the moment, it's trading on about 21 times earnings, which I think is relatively low compared to a lot of the major technology stocks. So, we think it still has some way to go.
Wall: And what's your second stock pick today?
Winter: The second one is another American company. So, this is Walt Disney (DIS). And the reason we like them is that we think the world is moving towards a place where the only live TV that people will watch will be sports. And other than that, they will just stream other things that have been pre-recorded. So, we like Disney because, one, it owns ESPN, which is the largest sporting network in the world, but mainly because they have such a huge backlog of valuable content, say films as well as TV shows.
Wall: I think UK investors will be familiar with Disney, the brand, but less so Disney, the stock, or Disney, the company. Is there anything other than that exposure to sports television that people should know about this stock?
Winter: I think I would say that people are perhaps concerned about the sports side of things at the moment. So, it is definitely true that ESPN subscribers have been falling and that has been a concern for quite some time. But we think that will level out. And once that happens, we think the negative sentiment around the stock will start to disappear and that will help the stock to rise.
And also, just a bit more topical information. Star Wars obviously is out at the moment and is doing incredibly well in the box office, and that is the latest franchise that Disney bought. So, they are doing incredibly well from that. And just before Christmas they did announce that they will be producing one more Star Wars trilogy. So, we think their business will continue to make a lot of money from Star Wars over the coming years.
Wall: And what's your third stock pick today?
Winter: The third one is a British company called Glencore (GLEN). So, this is a mining company. And it's quite interesting because it really has turned itself around over the last couple of years. So, back in late 2015, early 2016, Glencore actually lost about 80% of its value. So, it really had a huge fall. And the reason for that was that commodity prices were falling, people were concerned about lack of demand for commodities coming from China. And Glencore was the commodity business that had the hugest amount of debt. So, people were quite concerned about that. And there was a genuine worry that the business would go bust.
But actually, it really has turned itself around. It's greatly reduced its debt, which it's done by selling off a number of non-core businesses and also, we have seen a lot of commodity prices starting to rise again. So, that's been good for the stock. And the reason we like it going forward is that it has exposure to lots of the commodities that will be used in electrical vehicles, which are namely, copper, cobalt which will be in the batteries and also nickel.
Wall: Rachel, thank you very much.
Winter: You're welcome.
Wall: This is Emma Wall for Morningstar. Thank you for watching.
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