The losing steam of Apple Inc. stocks has only made them a bargain.

According to Robert Naess, who oversees 33 billion euros ($37 billion) in stocks at Nordea Bank, Scandinavia’s largest bank, the stocks of the iPhone maker is cheap and the risk is lower,

“Apple is boring now. Before there was no stability and growth was too high,” he said in an interview at Nordea’s offices in Oslo Thursday.

After the company ended 13 straight years of uninterrupted sales growth earlier in 2016, investors have started questioning Apple’s ability to expand. Shares are up 6.8 percent so far this year. This is a buying opportunity for Naess. He now holds about 2 percent in Apple in his funds after he started buying stock in May.

“It’s the first time. We’ve had the fund since 2005 and never owned Apple,” he said.

Thousands of companies are quantitatively analyzed to build a portfolio of about 100 “boring” stocks by Naess and his partner Claus Vorm. They are avoiding expensive stocks and are investing in companies with the most stable earnings. Beating 98 percent of its peers, Global Stable Equity Fund has returned 19 percent on average in the past five years.

“Many think it’s a peak, Apple is done and won’t succeed anymore but we look at the long-term earnings trend. Our case it that they keep their market share and that things will be OK going forward,” Naess said.

According to Naess, the overall, earnings growth estimates for 2017 are too high. He said that the market would be cooled by global earnings growth which will be as low as zero percent a year from now.

On a personal level Naess’ passion is cars, especially Teslas, while he operates strictly by the spreadsheet when it comes to investing. Elon Musk’s carmaker at one time banned him from ordering more as he and his family had bought so many of the top-end electric cars.

He is about to receive a Tesla Model X in the fall as he is once again allowed to place orders with Tesla’s sales now down. But one thing he won’t buy is the company’s stock.

“Don’t buy Tesla because they lose money all the time. Economically, Tesla is a terribly bad company,” he said.

He said that since it’s difficult to go from producing 50,000 cars to more than 500,000 cars, there’s a high risk Tesla won’t make any money.

“I think they won’t make it. I use Tesla as an example of a stock you shouldn’t invest in, even if they make fun and fine cars that I buy,” said Naess.

Naess sees rising rates as a long-term threat to his funds’ returns even as his funds have outperformed in the low rate environment in the years after the financial crisis.

“It’s difficult to hide from that risk. But the risk for that is low. It could happen but it could take 30 years before it happens,” he said.

(Adapted from Bloomberg)

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