The market is so possessed by tech that it can’t see the forest through the industrials. If the discourse isn’t about the slowdown in the cloud, it’s about who is pulling out of the now-private Twitter, or how disappointing it is that co-CEO Bret Taylor left Salesforce (CRM). Meta Platforms ‘ (META) Mark Zuckerberg could sneeze and Amazon (AMZN) CEO) Andy Jassy cough and it’s a bigger deal than United Airlines ‘ (UAL) order for 100 Dreamliners from Boeing (BA). We don’t pay much attention to the industrials anymore. There aren’t that many of them. We are used to them being hostage to so many forces of negativity that they just aren’t worth our focus. That’s wrong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has done so much better than the average semiconductor company, or even the above-average enterprise software company that it’s insane that we even focus on some of the latter. The 600 companies formed in the last two years rent too much of your brain space even in passing. Advertising, which turned out to be the Achilles heel of everything internet and media, just seems to have vanished. There’s not enough of it to feed the mouths of all of the players and nobody seems to be able to reach the 18- to 24-year-olds with whatever they spend. So they are shelling out a fraction of what they used to spend. It’s so bad that we cheer when a semiconductor company like Marvell Technology (MRVL), guides down and it only edges the stock down slightly. That gives the market hope that some of the inventory glut for chips is near its end. In the meantime, the unheralded industrials gap up on any S & P 500 run, where there never seems enough stock ahead to where you find sellers. I will go into the ones that intrigue — but first, let me just say that the biggest problem with so many of these techs is that there is so much supply at every level. Someone is always a seller. There’s always merchandise up a penny. And it is sizable. The orders, if you could hear them would be something like, “sell 50,000 shares every five cents thereabout for the next dollar and then I will reload when I get my report if there is enough time left at the end of the day. I don’t want to hurt the stock too much because I have so much behind it.” There is endless selling in anything related to the cloud and it isn’t just from the price target reductions. It is from insiders who sense that the era is over and they all compete with each other now, even Amazon, Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta get that. When the biggest issue with Meta is how much time is Zuckerberg really working on his alleged metaverse pipedream, instead of the highly profitable but slow-growing Instagram, you know you are way too deep in the weeds. Now I want you to hit up the stock of Caterpillar (CAT). When you are in the deep stages of a Federal Reserve interest rate tightening I would normally say that this may be the single best short in the book. Shorting a stock means betting it will go down. But not this time. There is no way CAT can meet its orders. Every industry needs more of what they make, whether it be coal because Europe has taken so many nuclear plants offline and natural gas has risen so much in price, or earthmovers needed for all the roads that are about to be built in this country because of the Democrat’s infrastructure bill, which favors domestic product. Meanwhile, its raw costs are going LOWER. Caterpillar de-emphasized China and emphasized oil and gas. While the public companies have cut back the pace of drilling, the private equity companies are drilling like mad to cover cash flow. Take a look at how CAT acts on up days. There is none for sale. None. A decent day and it always seems like Caterpillar’s stock has rallied three points. Why not; there are 527 million shares outstanding, down 20 million shares. What enterprise software company can say that? There are no stock base compensation issues. Stock is precious. CAT sells at 17 times REAL earnings, not FAKE or MADE UP earnings. That’s what we really should call the shameless non-GAAP adjusted earnings-per-share nonsense we get from these West coasters, which seems a lot like what General Electric (GE) was doing before its collapse. I bet an order to buy 100,000 shares of Caterpillar moves it 2 points. In a year when the S & P 500 dropped 14%, CAT has gained 14% year to date. Not to mention it has an annual dividend yield of 2%. Last week, I met with Emerson Electric (EMR) CEO Lal Karsanbhai. He’s turning this old-line but excellent valve and home appliance maker into a company that digitizes your hardware, that automates your plants while cutting out waste. In less than two years, Karsanbhai has sold slow-growing divisions, bought faster-growing businesses, and joint-ventured others in ways that the arrogant software types can only dream of doing. Like Caterpillar’s stock, EMR is straight up: 4% higher year-to-date. But in the past three months, shares are up 18.5%. I think the idea of bringing in an Emerson to innovate, automate and become cleaner — it also has a huge business in environmental improvement — is one of the first calls I would make if I ran an industrial. It’s an 18 times earnings stock. Anything that happens to Boeing, I am always bittersweet about. We sold some high, we sold some low, but most importantly we were just annoyed by its constant errors. We wanted to play aerospace, though, with so much travel, so we did it with Honeywell (HON). Here’s another story that just never stops ceases to amaze. Another reconfigured company with chemicals that clean the refining process, machines that automate factories, climate controls, and some of the most important parts of an airplane including the cockpit, for not just Boeing but Airbus. Honeywell stock sells at 25 times earnings but its growth is accelerating and it has cash and a balance sheet that is ready to be put to work for anything needed. HON is another one that’s up 5% year to date and more than 17% in the past three months. We know that we have gone through arsenals of low-tech military equipment as has NATO. But this big appropriation boost last week is going to give Raytheon Technologies (RTX) orders it needs to raise numbers for 2023. The anti-missile products that Raytheon specializes in are what I think are now headed to NATO members to do what they want with them, which means take them to Ukraine to defend against the now-nine-month invasion by Russia. Meanwhile, Raytheon’s aerospace, both military and commercial, have too many orders to handle. After some re-configuring as part of the merger between United Technologies and Raytheon, the buyback is in place. The only thing holding this company back is a lack of engineers. Can the people out West learn military engineering? They better learn to do so. RTX is up 17% year to date. I could include so many companies like these, Eaton Corporation (ETN) for pumps, valves and what you need for electrical vehicle charging; Illinois Tool Works (ITW) for equipment like welding, the growth portion of autos, and polymers, and all sorts of in high demand products; or Agilent Technologies (A), a test and measurement company for all sorts of industries that require precision and pinpoint accuracy. You can’t just own these. You won’t know when they stop going straight up. And you can’t just buy them. Jeff Marks, portfolio director for the Investing Club, and I went at it last week when I said that we have to, just have to own Emerson as fast as we can. But one look at the stock tells us that it’s just gone too far too fast. The thing is, they all have. I say let’s take a serious break from the software companies that were claimed to have eaten everything else for breakfast and start discussing the real winners since the November pivot — the companies that were supposed to collapse that, instead, have reinvented themselves and are part of the new industrial economy that’s been automated and digitized and doesn’t need customer relations management because it has too many customers. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long CRM, META, AMZN, GOOGL and HON. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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The market is so possessed by tech that it can’t see the forest through the industrials. If the discourse isn’t about the slowdown in the cloud, it’s about who is pulling out of the now-private Twitter, or how disappointing it is that co-CEO Bret Taylor left Salesforce (CRM). Meta Platforms‘ (META) Mark Zuckerberg could sneeze and Amazon (AMZN) CEO) Andy Jassy cough and it’s a bigger deal than United Airlines‘ (UAL) order for 100 Dreamliners from Boeing (BA).
Argonne National Laboratory is building a new research and development facility to independently test large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems for heavy-duty and off-road applications with funding from the US Department of Energy.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is hoping Argonne Nat’l Lab’s extensive fuel cell research experience, which dates back to 1996, will give it unique insights as it evaluates new polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems ranging from 150 to 600 kilowatts for use in industrial vehicle and stationary power generation applications.
The new Argonne test facility will help prove (or, it should be said, disprove) the validity of hydrogen as a viable fuel for transportation applications including heavy trucks, railroad locomotives, marine vessels, and heavy machines used in the agriculture, construction, and mining industries.
“The facility will serve as a national resource for analysis and testing of heavy-duty fuel cell systems for developers, technology integrators and end-users in heavy-duty transportation applications including [OTR] trucks, railroad locomotives, marine vessels, aircraft and vehicles used in the agriculture, construction and mining industries,” explains Ted Krause, laboratory relationship manager for Argonne’s hydrogen and fuel cell programs. “The testing infrastructure will help advance fuel cell performance and pave the way toward integrating the technology into all of these transportation applications.”
Speaking of Moog, we talked to some of the engineers being their ZQuip modular battery systems on a HEP-isode of The Heavy Equipment Podcast a few months back. I’ve included it, below, in case that’s something you’d like to check out.
Velocity truck rental is doing its part to help commercial fleets electrify by energizing 47 high-powered charging stations at four strategic dealer locations across Southern California. And they’re doing it now.
The new Velocity Truck Rental & Leasing (VTRL) charging network isn’t some far-off goal being announced for PR purposes. The company says its new chargers are already in the ground, and set to be fully online and energized by the end of this month at at VTRL facilities in Rancho Dominguez (17), Fontana (14), the City of Industry (14), and San Diego (2).
45 120 kW Detroit e-Fill chargers make up the bulk of VTRL’s infrastructure project, while two DCFC stations from ChargePoint get them to 47. All of the chargers, however, where chosen specifically to cater to the needs of medium and heavy-duty battery electric work trucks.
At Velocity, we are not just reacting to the shift towards electric mobility; we are at the forefront with our customers and actively shaping it. By integrating high-powered, commercial-grade charging solutions along key transit corridors, we are ensuring that our customers have the support they need today. This charging infrastructure investment is a testament to our commitment to helping our customers transition smoothly to electromobility solutions and to prepare for compliance with the Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) regulations.
David Deon, velocity president
Velocity plans to offer flexible charging options to accommodate the needs of different fleets, including both managed, “charging as a service” subscription plans and self-managed/opportunity charging during daily routes. While trucks are charging, drivers and operators will be able to relax in comfortable break rooms equipped with WIFI, television, snacks, water, and restrooms.
Electrek’s Take
While it feels a bit underwhelming to write about trucking companies simply following the letter of the law in California, the rollout of an all-electric, zero-emission commercial trucking fleet remains something that, I think, should be celebrated.
As I peruse Alibaba for all sorts of fun and interesting electric vehicles, I often stumble across seemingly outlandish products that often have a real use case behind them. The best of those make it into the recurring Awesome Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column, and that’s precisely where this man-carrying drone lands today.
To be fair, I’m not sure the main purpose of this flying EV is to carry people.
They do advertise it with a few images of a person suspended beneath it to show off the drone’s carrying capacity. And at least one of the photos seems like it’s actually non-recreational as the guy appears to be in the process of accessing a communications tower platform.
I guess for those who don’t want to spend half an hour climbing a ladder to change a light bulb or swap a connector, a drone might be a shortcut to some of these difficult access areas. It could also open up the worker pool for that job to not only people with Popeye’s forearms.
But manned work doesn’t seem like the main use case for a heavy-lift drone like this.
Instead, it appears to me that it’s primarily a work drone designed for utility tasks where you’d want to lift a serious amount of weight in tools or supplies.
The stated 200 kg (440 lb) weight-carrying capacity is quite impressive, especially since the unit only weighs 40 kg (88 lb) by itself. But you’ll want that extra lift potential for a number of its other advertised uses, such as a water sprayer for cleaning tasks or a heavy-lift drone for moving supplies in mountainous or otherwise hard-to-reach areas.
Interestingly, the drone can either run off of its 16 on-board batteries or can be tethered to an electrical cable for continuous flying. For longer duration jobs like window washing, that’s probably the better way to go.
The batteries only offer 20 minutes of flying time, and replacing 16 batteries with freshly charged units would probably take you another 20 minutes on the ground. That limited battery flight time also means that if you are going to use it to carry workers up onto aerial platforms, you better not take the scenic route.
The drone does come with three parachutes that can automatically deploy if it enters free fall, which makes me feel only marginally better about hanging onto that rope ladder and going for a ride.
The factory also advertises that the controls can be run tethered, so you don’t have to use radio frequency in areas where it might be jammed. That has me a bit worried about what other uses they’re envisioning for a heavy-lift drone like this, but I’ll leave that for another day.
How our resident Photoshop wizard imagines I’d look on one of these things
With an advertised price of US $5,000, it also seems weirdly affordable. I have no idea what the going rate for a man-lift drone is these days, but I probably would have guessed more than that. You can barely buy an electric motorcycle for that much, and those only move in a single plane.
Of course, the catch is that you have to buy two of them, as that’s the minimum order quantity from the seller. So if you’re crazy enough to strap into one of these things, you better find an equally crazy friend for the second one.
And in case it wasn’t yet clear, please don’t actually try to buy one of these from Alibaba. This column is a tongue-in-cheek exercise in exploring just how amazing and interesting the world’s largest EV provider’s catalog of wacky vehicles has become. But I am certainly not encouraging anyone to run the financial and emotional gauntlet of trying to buy something expensive on Alibaba. I’ve been there and done that, and it’s not for the timid.
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