Martin Marietta Materials (MLM)

A strong company with strong reserve life of aggregates in their quarries. But it's not a timely stock. There's confusion about why the home building industry is busy, but not the home aggregates. To explain, when people are building homes, the infrastructure for those homes are already complete. For an aggregate company to benefit, they need to get involved when say a former industrial or agricultural land to convert it into a subdivision when they build roads and other infrastructure--that's when the aggregates do well. Then, there's infrastructure; governments with lower tax revenues can't afford to spend on infrastructure like building roads now. Also with oil and gas in a slump, there's another source of demand gone.

Top Short Aggregate supply company in construction industry in the US. Not a lot of projects that are getting advanced. Recent quarter had marginal down tick in pricing but marginal up tick in volume but volume is highly tied to road building and well pads for shale gas drilling, which will be in decline. Trading at a 41X forward multiple.