No mention of BRN unfortunately but should be in the discussion...
AFR: Forget Nvidia and consider these ASX stocks instead
Tom RichardsonMarkets reporter and commentator
Aug 15, 2023 – 6.00am
The race to reinvent the workplace by integrating artificial intelligence into business processes will unleash some of the greatest investment opportunities of the next decade and could push certain stocks up five or 10-fold in value across multiple sectors.
Kelly Brough, Accenture’s head of AI for Australia and New Zealand, says ChatGPT captured the imaginations of executives.
But identifying winning companies is the challenge, as almost every business could boost sales or reduce costs by using AI to automate tasks, create more goods and services or communicate better.
The C-suite demand to adopt and leverage AI is accelerating so much that Goldman Sachs has estimated companies will invest $US200 billion ($306.9 billion) in 2025 to drive AI-linked efficiency and productivity.
Management consultant Accenture plans to double the number of global staff it has helping companies unlock the technology’s benefits from 40,000 to 80,000 over the next few years
Accenture – as the NYSE-listed corporate-makeover specialist – argues AI co-pilots will soon be a constant assistant for every employee in office jobs in areas like financial services, software services, the media, advertising, public relations, law, medicine, the civil service, academia, and human resources.
“ChatGPT really brought the reality and potential of AI into the imaginations of the majority of executives in the world and Australia,” says Kelly Brough, the head of Accenture’s applied intelligence division for Australia and New Zealand.
“Retail is one place where both analytic and generative AI together can improve a retailer’s ability to analyse product mix and how it is placed on shelves,
“An AI-driven approach could see a 2 per cent to 10 per cent increase in sales from applying an algorithmic approach, and some of that’s because AI is more specific based on store location.”
Finding winners
Accenture in Australia advises many of the most powerful chief executives and boards on how their businesses can beat the competition.
The company’s research claims 40 per cent of all working hours could be impacted by generative AI assistants like Chat GPT-4 because language-related tasks account for 62 per cent of total employee work hours, and 65 per cent of language tasks are capable of being transformed into more productive activity through augmentation and automation.
The dawn of the AI revolution has equities analysts and fund managers scrambling to identify potential winners before the broader market cottons on to them.
Emmanuel Datt, the Melbourne-based founder of investment group Datt Capital, says companies must have the sufficient digital technology in place to use AI as a bolted-on assistant, with data footprints large enough to be interpreted by AI to improve performance.
“Something like software logistics group WiseTech is ideal,” Datt says. “As they have global data and are entrenched in their industry, they capture lots of efficiencies and benefits from adopting AI.
“Financial services is another big one because they have long tails of customer data. Lenders, for example, have lots of credit data on customers. Insurers have a long range of historical data.
“Retailers with customer loyalty programs can trace spending habits of consumers to target and personalise marketing.
“And sticky tech platforms like Netwealth and Hub would be silly not to adopt AI given they have all this customer data.”
RBC Capital equities analyst Wei-Weng Chen says online retailers such as Kogan, Adore Beauty,
and furniture merchant Temple & Webster could grow sales by using computer programs to write descriptions for around 300,000 items for sale online.
“So, [Temple & Webster] can convert more website users into sales, it’s almost impossible to manually write a good description for all items for sale online,” he says.
AI investment is set to reinvent the workplace and flow through to every company’s financial statements
“But with AI they can do that and drive up conversions as customers have more confidence in what they’re buying with a better description and staff previously doing that they can put into more revenue generating roles.
“Temple & Webster are also rolling out ChatGPT as their pre-sales bot, so you can ask the bot, is this couch suitable for me as I have a husky dog at home?”
He adds that sharemarket investors should favour online-only retailers instead of hybrid or bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Harvey Norman and Nick Scali, which have to pay staff on showroom floors and rents for stores.
“You can’t AI your lease costs, so the online players have an advantage. ChatGPT is very cheap, they want to get companies using it. Travel companies’ customer support and chat is a big part of their business, so they’ll use it.
“Webjet at the start of the pandemic said it had to hire additional staff to deal with the volume of calls, so with a chatbot for customer support, if you crack the code it’ll be pretty powerful.”
Ultimately, for every investor the nosebleed profits will come from finding AI winners before the market.
It’s no use buying Nvidia today if everyone knows it’s a big winner, you have to find the Nvidia of tomorrow.
But if Accenture is on the money, almost every listed business is a candidate to surprise the market as an AI winner by growing sales or profits faster than expected.
Meanwhile, evidence of AI-driven success in financial statements will likely result in the market assigning businesses higher profit multiples to boost share price gains as the market’s mania for AI unfolds.