Volkswagen AGVOW.DEWAITOct 22, 2013Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Aug 29, 2024. Market Open.
Not a huge fan. Reasonably well managed. Slowdown in EV buying, just as it's been ramping up its EV production. The field is getting crowded, and Chinese makers have the cost advantage. These factories take so many 10s of billions of dollars of investment, so if you don't get demand in a reasonable time, EPS suffers.
Auto companies haven't been great investments over the long haul.
He is not a big fan of car companies because they don't generate much free cash flow. Cap X is very high. He would prefers LFUS-Q. It makes all the fuses that go into electric vehicles.
He wouldn't invest in any automotive company, because we are already running ASAR (a seasonally adjusted rate of production) in the US of 16 or 17 million vehicles. Your best-case scenario to get to 18 million vehicles is extremely limited. We’ve also seen producers do a lot of subprime financing in order to place cars, which implies they have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find demand.
The argument for this one is that the environment looks pretty good. Big sales in China and US sales are ramping up. The fleet is getting old, some say 13-14 years. Asia is a very important place to be. When he analyzed balance sheets he bought Tata (TTM-N) and Ford (F-N). They will all break out and do better. Wait for a pull back.