We’re adding to a hard-hit stock that should see relief from rate cuts and election clarity
We are buying 200 shares of Nextracker at roughly $34.20 Following the trade, Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust will own 1,150 shares of NXT, increasing its weighting to 1.2% from 1%. We’re making one small buy on Friday because the market has drifted significantly lower since our Morning Meeting . We urged patience in the meeting because of how tricky September usually is, but for investors like us with plenty of cash on the sidelines, it’s fine to pick some spots here and there in stocks that have been crushed lately. At the same time, we don’t foresee ourselves becoming aggressive and buying anything in size until the S & P Short Range Oscillator moves into oversold territory. As of Thursday’s close, oversold is still far away. A stock that has been hit hard lately is Nextracker, the solar tracking solutions provider for large utility-scale projects. It has been a big disappointment over the past few months, falling from the high $50s a share in late June to about $34 on Friday. Some of the drop can be chalked up to policy risk from the increasing uncertainty of who will win the presidential election. A victory by Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is seen as more supportive of renewable energy, while a win by former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, would favor more oil and gas. To a lesser extent, we’ve also seen some weakness across a large swath of stocks tied to the electricity power generation theme as Wall Street has started questioning the size and longevity of the artificial intelligence data center rollout. Part of our initial thesis in Nextracker was that the U.S. isn’t producing enough electricity to meet the growing needs of data centers. What really started the decline, though, is the company’s second quarter earnings report after the close Aug. 1. Even though the company beat Wall Street estimates handily on both revenue and adjusted earnings per share, the market crushed the stock due to a lack of guidance raise and commentary from executives that projects have been delayed. Nextracker’s backlog grew sequentially to over $4 billion in the second quarter, but it did not increase enough to ease concerns that growth is decelerating. While we understand these concerns, we still have reason to believe Nextracker management was sticking with its track record of being conservative. The pace of new projects may also pick up toward the end of the year after the Federal Reserve starts cutting interest rates and we get some clarity in the White House. Renewable energy projects are highly sensitive to changes in rates because most of the cost of the life of the project is upfront, so lower rates will make solar projects much more economical. A final point: Shares are now trading at roughly 11 times the consensus earnings estimate for Nextracker’s current fiscal year, so this is a pretty cheap stock that only needs a few things to go right to get a high multiple. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NXT. 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. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Read the full article here