ABB Ltd. (ABB-N)

ABB now is not the ABB of old under the new CEO. It's performed quite well. It's a big behemoth that gets involved in state-level projects, therefore is slow-moving. Buy it at $15 or higher, collect the dividend, then sell when it runs up.

Engineering company out of Europe.
Robotics is a growth industry.
Strong company that will perform well in the long term.
Current share price a good time to buy.

This company is facing challenges, especially in the industrial space – like GE-N. He would not touch any industrial company, due to interest rate trend increases.

Doesn’t think this one is timely. When looking back when earnings grow beyond what people expect, it is usually in a cycle where there is tremendous investment going into the high voltage electrical grid. When copper prices and electrical steel prices move up in tandem with a good demand environment in the energy sector, that is exactly when you have pricing power for transformers. He doesn’t see any of those conditions today.

The 2^nd largest manufacturer of industrial robots. The stock has done really, really well on the expectation of Europe starting to recover and the US is improving. There is better outlook for industrial robots. The company reports in Swiss francs and raises its dividend, but because of the strength of the US$ investor, we have not seen those gains. At these levels, he thinks this is quite rich.

We have heard for so long that infrastructure spending will pick up, and this company in particular has been one of those companies that should be a beneficiary as they are involved in distribution and transmission. It has disappointed for a long time because the expectation just hasn’t been realized. Expects this scenario will continue longer than people realize. While a very good company, he is not sure there is going to be any growth in earnings or sales.

This used to be regarded as a great play on infrastructure investment in the emerging world. It got hit very badly in the financial crisis. Longer-term it hasn’t done a great deal, which is a little bit surprising given its involvement with things like power infrastructure and civil engineering. Probably not a bad time to be picking it up if you believe, as he does, of higher growth in China and the emerging markets and the central banks remaining on Hold.

He likes this and effectively treats it as a perpetual bond. It generally has more cash than debt, does tuck in acquisitions, opportunistically prunes its portfolio and grows its dividend. It reports in US dollars, but is headquartered in Switzerland. Has raised its dividend quite nicely since 2006. Below $20 it is a Buy, and then when it gets up around the $20-$25 mark, it might pare back.

In the last 18 months, they had some major challenges. The 1^st to deploy an offshore wind farm outside of Germany. It took a number of one-time special charges. Thinks we are mostly through that now. In the $18-$19 range there is some good value here. Dividend has slightly been improving. On big large grid development projects, until the health of governments improve, the backlog for these businesses may not become as strong as it would be in a boom time in the economy. He sees this as topping out at around $24-$26 range. You could buy it here, but, longer-term would trim if it moves higher again.

This has been a very interesting story in the last couple of years. Went down to around $15 and then back up. Has now fallen back down from the $25 range. A couple of things have caused this. There was a cyclical recovery in Europe and that was a big uptick and it got to a point where expectations were a little overblown. The recent fall has been because of sanctions to Russia and delayed big projects around the world. The major challenge is that they had major project in an offshore wind farm that blew up on them and they have to take some special one-time charges. That will probably all be done by the end of the year. They have more cash than debt. A big cash generator engine. 4.5% dividend.

Swiss listed electrical products company. Utility spending should increase over the next couple of years. Now you have so much equipment that is so much depreciated over the last few years that this company should do well as spending increases. A cyclical way to play the electrical industry.

He is pretty constructive on Europe now but doesn’t think it is going to be gangbusters. European markets have picked up off the bottom. This is a big global engineering company. Active in Asia, which he likes because the growth in Asia is 2 to 3 times what we have in the developed countries.

Has owned this for quite a long time. For a company that has more cash than it has debt, it was actually quite volatile. Earnings are kind of slow, but this is a company that is in global power markets, so if China slows down, it will slow down. Very strong balance sheet. If you can get it in the low $20’s, that would be a good entry point.