China robotaxis, India pharma among top picks at Sohn confab

Hedge funds revealed their top investment ideas, ranging from Chinese self-driving taxis, an Indian drug retailer, to a Korean nuclear plant builder, at the annual Sohn investment conference in Hong Kong.

- SUMMER ZHEN

This year’s picks are geographically more diverse compared to last year, suggesting that investors are actively seeking to spread their exposure to counter tariff uncertainties and market volatility.

San Francisco-based Flight Deck Capital sees upside potential in Chinese search engine giant Baidu, betting on its fast-growing auto-driving business.

Similar to Google's self-driving unit Waymo, Baidu’s Apollo Go “is the only robo-taxi player in China that’s not dependent on the capital markets to scale,” Flight Deck founder and managing partner Jay Kahn said at the conference on Friday.

He expects China's taxi and ride-share industry to grow to around $237 billion by 2034, with Apollo taking a 15% market share. But that segment, together with Baidu’s cloud business, is currently given zero valuation by the market, he said.

Notably, investor optimism on Chinese firms going overseas has not been derailed by the escalating US-China trade war.