Schafer Cullen Capital Sees Global Middle Class Growth Driving Top Picks

August 3, 2017

Rahul Sharma is an Executive Director and Portfolio Manager at Schafer Cullen Capital Management.  Mr. Sharma is currently bullish on selected emerging market and frontier market investments and identified some top picks in his exclusive interview with the Wall Street Transcript.

“We have identified a couple attractive investments, and one of them is Qingdao Haier (SHA:600690). They’re now the global leader in white-goods production, making air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, small household appliances, etc. Some people in the U.S. may have heard of them because the company recently acquired GE’s (NYSE:GE) business here in the U.S.

Mr. Sharma reasons that “you are definitely seeing the emergence of a huge middle class, whose incomes are growing over time. We think this is a once-in-a-lifetime investable theme that is in the very early stages. If you look at India and China alone, you are talking about well over 2 billion people, and middle classes that, combined, are already larger than in the U.S.”

Another emerging market pick is Indiabulls, also due to the company’s exposure to a rapidly growing middle class in India:  “Indiabulls offers better valuation, faster growth and, obviously important for us, a very attractive dividend yield at over 4%, which is more than double the Indian market average.”

For more insights and top picks from Rahul Sharma of Schafer Cullen Capital, read the entire interview at the Wall Street Transcript.