Buying shares of Nvidia or other semiconductor and Big Tech stocks is just one way to play the artificial intelligence theme. There’s a cheaper way to play it, Sean Peche of Ranmore Fund Management told CNBC Pro Talks last week. “Most investors over the last couple of years have thought that the only way to play AI is to own Nvidia and a few of the other peers,” the portfolio manager said. Peche is positive on tapping the financials sector to get into this theme. “You’ve got … attractive dividend yield far higher than those REITs in the States,” Peche said. “If you look at their growth and tangible book value, it’s been just upwards from left to right, well managed, low price earnings ratio, where I’ve got additional upside from the use of technology.” AI is going to help these banks, but investors are “not paying for” the AI factor given that these stocks are trading at only six times earnings, he pointed out. The price-to-earnings ratio of the S & P 500 , whose performance has been dominated by Big Tech, is currently at 27.03, according to FactSet data. Shares of Nvidia are trading at around 57 times earnings. Names he likes include French bank BNP Paribas , which Peche noted has identified 780 “test cases” where AI can help its business. “So even something like banking, it can help lower costs. And you know, how many times have you been into a branch recently? Think about your app and your chat bot, and if you wanted to add signatories and help them with compliance and all the risk,” said Peche. He also named ABN Amro and UniCredit , adding that the latter is “very well managed” and one of the banks with the biggest potential to benefit from AI. “Interestingly, when we were doing some analysis many months ago on the benefits of AI in the banking sector … Of the large European banks, Unicredit came back first, showing you that there’s a serious culture of performance and delivery there,” Peche said. He likes European banks in general, with all his exposure being to this corner of the sector – but stressed that he doesn’t own them solely because of AI, which he says is just a bonus.
