{"id":132221,"date":"2025-11-13T02:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T02:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/132221\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T02:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T02:50:10","slug":"the-underrated-uk-stocks-to-avoid-ai-bubble-concerns-fund-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/132221\/","title":{"rendered":"The underrated UK stocks to avoid AI bubble concerns: Fund manager"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A weaker dollar and hefty AI-related stock prices have led investors to look for deals elsewhere \u2014 and the U.K. is a good place to start, according to Sean Peche, portfolio manager at Ranmore. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to be selective about what you buy but there&#8217;s lots of other opportunities out there in the world,&#8221; Peche told CNBC&#8217;s Squawk Box Europe \u2014 &#8220;you just got to know where to find them,&#8221; he added. U.S. equities have soared this year as the bull run on AI-related stocks continues. The Magnificent 7 index, which includes Alphabet , Amazon , Apple , Meta , Microsoft , Nvidia , and Tesla , is up around 23.5% year-to-date. Investors looking to hedge against a potential crash and take advantage of a weaker dollar, which was volatile at the beginning of the year but has somewhat stabilized, have looked for underdogs including in emerging markets . &#8220;We&#8217;ve managed to make a lot of money this year out of the likes of European banks, of Korean companies, Hong Kong listed companies,&#8221; Peche said. The fund manager is\u00a0particularly bullish on travel, which is being buoyed by technology thanks to variable ticket prices, he said. &#8220;Technology is helping those businesses become far better businesses than they once were, whereas it&#8217;s creating more competitors for the likes [of] cosmetics,&#8221; he added. In terms of individual stocks, here&#8217;s what Peche has his eye on the U.K. specifically: EasyJet: &#8220;We like EasyJet , that&#8217;s in our top 10,&#8221; the fund manager said, noting that the airline&#8217;s third-quarter profits are up. Indeed, buoyed by more passengers and holiday packages, the firm posted profit before tax of \u00a3286 million ($374.7 milion) in the third-quarter, a \u00a350 million increase year-on-year, which it said was in line with expectations. EasyJet has had a mixed performance this year, with its shares\u00a0down 14.8%\u00a0to-date. It\u00a0reported a loss for the first six months of 2025, but said in is second-quarter results that current bookings indicate it will meet expectations for full-year profit. It now expects a rise in profits, and in routes flown and packages sold, but to earn less money per flight. Greggs: Another company in his top 10 is bakery and fast food chain Greggs , which has shed 44.7%\u00a0this year. Its sales were hit during a summer heatwave, plunging as much as 15% in one July session , but the sausage roll-maker remains a beloved chain by U.K. consumers. &#8220;It&#8217;s a great business, it&#8217;s a great value proposition for customers. The price of their coffee is a fraction of many of the other high street coffee chains and, yet, the stock is cheaper than it&#8217;s ever been. And it&#8217;s all huge growth prospects,&#8221; Peche said. Greggs went &#8220;viral&#8221; on social media many times over recent years, for everything from its donuts to sausage roll-dispensing ATM in partnership with British neobank Monzo. Diageo: Diageo &#8216;s UK shares price popped on Monday, closing the session 5.2% higher, following the appointment of a new CEO. It&#8217;s in sharp contrast to the decade-low the drinks maker reached last week after cutting sales and profit forecasts in its earnings call. &#8220;A recent position has been Diageo, so we had a nice jump yesterday,&#8221; Peche said, despite the firm being &#8220;deeply out of favor&#8221; otherwise. The price for U.K.-listed shares is down\u00a028.7%\u00a0year-to-date. However, Peche described Guinness, which is made by Diageo,\u00a0as a &#8220;jewel&#8221; that&#8217;s doing well, giving &#8220;a nice dividend yield of 4.5%.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A weaker dollar and hefty AI-related stock prices have led investors to look for deals elsewhere \u2014 and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,2709,5740,5892,363,364,2339,553,90864,90866,90865,220,5745,5741,111,139,5742,69,145,19814],"class_list":{"0":"post-132221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alphabet-class-a","10":"tag-amazon-com-inc","11":"tag-apple-inc","12":"tag-artificial-intelligence","13":"tag-artificialintelligence","14":"tag-breaking-news-markets","15":"tag-business-news","16":"tag-diageo-plc","17":"tag-easyjet-plc","18":"tag-greggs-plc","19":"tag-markets","20":"tag-meta-platforms-inc","21":"tag-microsoft-corp","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nvidia-corp","25":"tag-nz","26":"tag-technology","27":"tag-tesla-inc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}