By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global demand for energy is likely to keep up while supply lags, making energy-related stocks an area of interest for investors in Latin America, a money manager at Brandywine Global Investment Management LLC said on Wednesday.
Sean Bogda said that the ratios of price to book value, which measures a company's total net assets, is not high for energy-related companies, making the sector attractive.
"I think there's a strong argument for the energy services companies, as well as those companies that have strong production growth going forward and have some very good assets on the oil, exploration and production side," Bogda said at the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit
"We're finding some interesting companies across the board, globally as well as in Latin America, that fit our criteria," said Bogda, who helps manage about $500 million in emerging markets assets at Brandywine, which oversees about $40 billion overall.
Bogda said Taiwan and Korea may offer better opportunities at the moment because of future potential upside to stock prices than do the big Latin American markets of Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
Latin America's major stock market indexes have been some of the world's biggest gainers in the past three years, leading investors to wonder how much upside there is in the future.
Bogda said Brazil's economic growth looked good and that, with its interest rates likely to fall further, stocks that are trading at 10 times forward earnings are not expensive.
"I don't think there's a tremendous amount of downside risk in the market," he said. But "I don't think there are out-sized Continued...
© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.
| Paper | Aug 20 - 21, 2008 | Manufacturing |
| Japan Investment | Jul 01 - 2, 2008 | Country Summits |
| Global Real Estate | Jun 23 - 25, 2008 | Real Estate |
| Consumer and Retail | Jun 16 - 18, 2008 | Consumer Retail |
| Investment Outlook | Jun 09 - 12, 2008 | Financial Services / Exchanges |
