
NYSE:GE
This has rolled over on the back of US valuations being quite stretched. It is actually a play on the global economy. Has a lot of industrial operations in different countries. The question will be how the global economy continues to stack up. If you have a positive outlook, this is a company that you can add to. The dividend is safe and will grow.
They took a huge risk buying the French engineering company a few years ago. So far, so good. What they are doing now with Baker Hughes is a huge risk. This is part of their transition away financial services. There is a lot of uncertainty around these big moves that they are making. He is bearish on energy and commodities.
This has been disappointing and hasn’t really tracked as well as some of the other names he owns, such as United Technologies in the industrial space, or even some of the defence contractors. At this stage, he probably would not want to sell as a lot of the business is related to the oil market. Feels the oil markets are starting to bottom a little. Wait for oil prices to move a little and for the stock to move up a few dollars and then consider what you want to do. Dividend yield of 3.55%.
Often what happens when a new regime comes in, they tend to throw the kitchen sink in with the next earnings report, and get rid of anything that is bad. He suspects that will happen. Their estimates of cash flow and earnings were high, and were not going to be able to achieve them. Longer-term, this is constructive.
CEO is a little out of favour. It is one of the worst performers in the Dow to date. Still has a very generous dividend yield and they have a number of various levers for growth, from healthcare to energy. Thinks investors are ultimately going to come back to this company. If all else fails, they can do more restructuring to unlock value.
If you don’t have much exposure to industrials, this is a good name to own. It reminds him a lot of Microsoft (MSFT-Q), which was stuck in the mud back around 2013. When Ballmer was replaced, the stock hasn’t looked back since. If the CEO was replaced, he could see the stock significantly higher. Good dividend yield.
An industrial company that had a massive financial services business attached to it. That financial services had a very high return on equity, that kind of masked the cyclicality of the industrial businesses. Trading at 18X earnings with a 3.3% dividend yield, but it is a 90% industrial company, and is more cyclical than it ever was before. He would say this is fairly valued at these prices.
He likes industrials, he just doesn’t like conglomerates, which are more defensive, protective type of names, which don’t have the beta. There are a number of different names he would prefer over this, such as Ingersoll-Rand, Raytheon, etc.