Qual'è un settore molto adatto ai prossimi mesi ? I Porti e Aereporti ---------------------------------------------------------------- MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2004 An Interview With Rudolph-Riad Younes the co-manager of $15 billion in assets, including the $8 billion flagship Julius Baer International Equity Fund ................ : What other stocks are high on your list? A: Another theme of ours is airports. They tend to be underfollowed by Wall Street because only 10% of airport assets are listed and they are not very liquid investments. We like them because they tend to be natural monopolies: They have a monopoly on the aviation side as well as the retail side. They tend to be lightly regulated. We have owned airports for years, but we've accelerated our buying in the past six months. Our key pick in the sector is Fraport, which holds a portfolio of airports, but the bulk of its valuation is based on the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. It's a very attractive hub. It's very efficient. It is a perfect hub for airline transfers. Frankfurt is Lufthansa's hub, and Lufthansa has one of the biggest alliances with other airlines in the world. As wealth in China improves and we see more Asian travelers and shoppers, airports should benefit. Asian and Japanese travelers buy a lot at airports. The Frankfurt airport has a strong network to Asia and should capitalize on this. Fraport is improving its retail shops at the Frankfurt airport and a new terminal is being built, which will add to growth. Valuations look very reasonable. On an Ebitda [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] basis it looks really, really cheap -- 5.1 times, versus 9.6 times for its peers because its margins are much lower than its peers. We think the discount will decrease over time. On a P/E basis it's 15 times '05 earnings, versus 16 to 20 times for its peers Q: Any others? A: We also like seaport operators -- the cousins of airports, really. We prefer airports to airlines and seaports to shippers because the latter always experience chronic overcapacity. The way to benefit from global travel and transport is to invest in natural monopolies such as airports and seaports. Shipping trends are such that the order book for container ships has hit a record high totaling 47% of the global fleet, and orders for vessels larger than 4,000 TEU [20-foot-equivalent units] are above 100% of the global fleet. That will likely result in a collapse in the Baltic Freight Index, and so it's not a good idea to invest in shippers