President Biden’s infrastructure plan is a boon for clean energy, and one unsuspecting winner could be General Electric.
The company’s investments in wind turbines are beginning to challenge Siemens and Vestas Wind Systems among others. CEO Larry Culp has made renewable energy a big priority – GE projects the segment will post revenue growth in the mid-single digits for full year 2021.
Shares have risen 23% so far this year, triple the gains for the S&P 500.
Bill Baruch, president of Blue Line Futures, says the charts suggest further upside.
“I’m looking at a lot of good technicals here,” Baruch told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Thursday. GE “last year made a new low but it held that 2009 low. It’s recovered strongly and you’ve got this wedge right now that’s really consolidating and it’s holding the 50-day moving average very well.”
Now, it needs to move out of this consolidation phase, says Baruch.
“If it can move out above this wedge, which it has started to do, and really get through that $14 to $14.50 area, the upside is $16.80 there which is where a lot of the selling pressure really kicked in back in 2018, so I think that’s the sort of target,” said Baruch.
GE has not traded above $16.80 since January 2018. It implies 27% upside from Thursday’s close of $13.28.
Tocqueville Asset Management portfolio manager John Petrides is a little more skeptical on GE and any tailwinds from the infrastructure proposal, though.
“The whole story here is a ‘show me’ story. This will be the third time we’ve got infrastructure plans coming through in the last 12 years, and I think it’s been cautionary to chase stocks purely on the back of infrastructure, specifically only one piece of the infrastructure plan,” Petrides said during the same interview.
Though he holds the stock, Petrides is not ready to add to any position right now. Instead, he sees better opportunity in the alternative energy space rather than GE.
Disclosure: Petrides holds GE. Tocqueville clients hold GE.
