Rise of the robots: Bank of America names its favorite stocks for our post-Covid future
Strategists at Bank of America have picked out a slew of stocks that they believe will benefit from the drastic technological changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. BofA equity strategist Felix Tran, lead author of a research note on the future of work published last week , said the pandemic had accelerated the digitization of the economy, and technologies like automation and artificial intelligence had been rapidly adopted. Further to this, the strategists believe that machines now will be taking on a more equal share of workloads going forward. In fact, WEF data cited in the report, found that humans and machines could be spending an equal amount of time on work tasks by 2025. And with this mind, there are some global stocks primed to take advantage of these changes. Here are BOA's picks: Digitization With a trend toward AI and chatbots, Tran flagged French firm Teleperformance and U.S. business Concentrix as global leaders in customer experience. He also mentioned U.S. company TTEC , Canada's Telus and Indian firm Infosys , which all work in digital solutions and customer support. AI, chatbots and robot process automation could displace 2 billion jobs by 2030, BofA said, referring to a statistic from futurist Thomas Frey. However, in the case of RPA, which is the use of software to perform routine, high-volume tasks, BofA estimated that the IT services implementation market for this software could be worth $10 billion by 2022. Tran highlighted U.K. software firm Blue Prism as a pioneer in this space, in addition to Israel-based NICE Systems , which also operates in crime and compliance, AI and machine learning. Industrial robots and automation Tran highlighted U.S. firm Rockwell , British company Aveva , German multinational KION and Japanese robotics business Fanuc , as some beneficiaries of this trend. In addition, he mentioned American industrial internet of things firm PTC , Pennsylvania-based software company Ansys , "cobot" maker Teradyne and robot fiber laser manufacturer IPG Photonics . The strategists said in the note that while the faster adoption of industrial robots could result in major blue-collar job losses, they didn't see it as a "zero-sum game" but actually foresaw a greater collaboration with humans. For instance, they said a new type of smaller, more nimble robot that can be moved easily round a factory to assist a human had emerged, nicknamed a "cobot." This had emerged from the fact that traditional larger industrial robots typically needed programming from advanced software engineers, driving up ownership costs. Ultimately, the strategists said this rise in the use of robots isn't necessarily something to fear, as another piece of WEF data referenced in the note showed automation will add 12 million jobs by 2025.

WEF data found that humans and machines could be spending an equal amount of time on work tasks by 2025. Sarote Pruksachat | Moment | Getty Images