Dialing Up Emerging Markets

Investors who gag on the prices of U.S. telecom stocks but want to stay with the sector should look abroad. “There is still a ton of growth within emerging markets telecom,” says Meagan Morris Nace, equity analyst at DuPont Capital Management.

Nace is one of four analysts focused on emerging markets at DuPont Capital, which oversees $26 billion for its chemical company parent and for outside clients. She points to the opportunities awaiting Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems, the largest mobile phone operator in the former Soviet Union. The $4 billion (2004 sales) company does most of its business in Russia, where, Nace says, barely half the population has wireless service. She expects that three-quarters will have it within three years. The company also controls half the Ukrainian market, the next largest in the region, where wireless penetration is only 34%.

Full story (reg. required) at Forbes.com