What a Time to Run This T. Rowe Price Tech Fund
A penchant for semiconductor stocks amid the AI boom is boosting returns for the T. Rowe Price Global Technology Fund.
Dominic Rizzo, manager of the T. Rowe Price Global Technology Fund (PRGTX), loves his job. "It's exciting. This is the moment for technology," he says. Since taking over Global Technology in late 2022, he has delivered a 33% annualized return, ahead of the 24% average gain of tech-fund peers.
Rizzo favors companies with linchpin technologies in innovative, growing markets, among other things. Roughly half of its assets are invested in semiconductor stocks, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Broadcom (AVGO), that are benefiting from the boom in spending on artificial intelligence (AI).
"That's been the right call," he says, and it's a big driver of the fund's 30% 12-month return, which beat 73% of its peers.
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Cutting back on top holdings
Rizzo has trimmed some top holdings, including Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT), in part to raise cash for new investments — Samsung Electronics (SSNLF), a memory-chip giant, and Datadog (DDOG), a cloud-based infrastructure-and application-monitoring company, are two.
But, he says, "we remain AI 'on' and semiconductor 'on,'" adding that these stocks aren't overpriced.
"People underestimate how much earnings are climbing for so many of these companies." Some top gainers, including Nvidia (NVDA), trade at a price/earnings-to-growth ratio, called the PEG ratio, of less than one, which is generally viewed as a sign that a stock is undervalued.
"I still think AI is bigger than people think," Rizzo says, adding that he expects the AI chip market to grow from $45 billion in 2023 to $500 billion in 2028 and $1 trillion in 2030.
PRGTX, a member of the Kiplinger 25, our favorite no-load mutual funds, is an "all-weather fund," says Rizzo. It can be volatile, but no more so than the typical tech fund. And in recent stretches when stocks have stumbled, the fund has held up better than its peers.
Loading up on mega caps helps dampen the fund's volatility, he says. So does spreading his investments across the globe (30% of the portfolio's holdings are non-U.S. stocks) and to other tech industries. That allows the fund to take a flier on some private AI companies, with stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks.
Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.
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