Lorne Steinberg DuPont de Nemours Inc. DD-N DON'T BUY Jun 27, 2024

DD operates in a cyclical industry and is now trading at 20x times' Forward P/E. In the last few years, DD did actively sell some of its non-core assets, and redeploy the proceeds into significant share repurchases. The balance sheet is okay, with net debt of $3.7B (the debt has gone down substantially due to the proceeds from asset sales mentioned) and net debt/EBITDA is around 1.1x, okay for a cyclical name. Based on consensus estimates, sales are expected to decline by 5% this year and then normalize to around 5% growth going forward. Given the aggressive buyback (the company even cuts the dividends to do more buybacks), DD is quite attractive, but, given the cyclicality of the business, we would size the position conversatively.
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They just finished a $3.25 billion share buyback and will start a $2 billion one. They've retired 7.6% of their shares so far this year. All told they will reduce shares by 13.5%, the 3rd-biggest buyback on the S&P 500. If you feel interest rates will continue to rise, Dupont is too risk; Dupont has some cyclicality because it's exposed to autos. Overall, he likes Dupont.

Reported a disappointing quarter today, but he feels is on the cusp to rise. He trusts the CEO who see green shoots in the electronics end markets that would drive company earnings.

Can benefit from interest rate cuts, since its business is in homebuilding and related.

They're about to spin off into 3 public companies, masterminded by a great CEO. It's a top company.

They announced after today's close that they're accelerating the spin-off of a division and keeping the other. This will bring out more value. Worth holding onto.

In the current market it is hard to determine how much of the recent drop was China related, or market related. It is not good news, and the stock is down 24% YTD. It is also, of course, sensitive to the economy, which has gone from hot to cool to maybe cold. Good earnings growth is expected based on estimates, and even if this comes down a bit there should still be some earnings growth. We think it is cheap enough to hold through the current cycle. It may stay volatile in the short term, along with pretty much everything else. 
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They have one small division that Chinese authorities investigated, so the stock lost 25% of its value, and hasn't bounced back. He likes DD, but who knows what China will do during this trade war with Trump.