The man with the longest track record of covering US-listed shipping stocks is also top of the pack in the view of institutional investors following the sector.
Evercore ISI researcher Jonathan Chappell has won the voting by participants in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual ranking of shipping analysts.
Chappell is regarded as “the dean” of shipping analysts, given his experience dating back nearly 20 years.
He won top honours in 2020 when he dethroned five-time winner Michael Webber, formerly of Wells Fargo bank and currently head of boutique firm Webber Research & Advisory.
Chappell had come third last year, behind Bank of America’s Kenneth Hoexter and Deutsche Bank’s Amit Mehrotra. While Chappell and Hoexter swapped spots this year, Mehrotra retained his second-place finish.
Rounding out the top five were Jefferies’ Omar Nokta at fourth and Christian Wetherbee of Citi.
Stifel’s Ben Nolan took sixth place, and there was a sharp drop in the voting from there.
“We’ve tried to remain incredibly visible and actionable in our shipping stock calls, understanding the volatility and lesser coverage of these stocks, despite really shifting overall focus to broader transportation,” Chappell told TradeWinds on Tuesday.
“I would think our experience with covering many cycles has helped clients to navigate the volatility and uncertainty, within the macro and geopolitical landscapes. Frankly, having the tanker group be the primary focus for investors this past year — as opposed to container ships in 2021 and dry bulk in 2022 — really played into our coverage and experience strengths.”
While Chappell remains a strong voice in coverage of tanker stocks, he and Evercore opted to drop coverage of dry bulk shipowners in July 2020. The owners’ relatively small market capitalisations, paired with Chappell’s move into covering the trucking and rail sectors, made the move necessary, he said at the time.
He has been writing shipping reports since 2001 in his former post at JP Morgan, back when there were only three public shipowners in New York. He expanded his coverage to 21 owners before jumping to Evercore in 2011.
Two shipping analysts were also able to score high places in Institutional Investor’s tables of transportation analysts.
In that case, it was Hoexter coming second and Mehrotra third.
