SpaceX Fears Knocked Down Howmet Stock. Citi Says Buy the Dip.

Dow Jones
Sep 01

Elon Musk sent a shock wave through the power generation equipment supply chain on Monday. That has Wall Street looking for stocks to buy on Tuesday.

Citi is urging investors to act quickly on Howmet Aerospace.

Musk wants to build a lot of AI computers and that requires a lot of power; the power-generating equipment needs turbine blades and vanes. That's why Musk is concerned about a seemingly obscure part of the electricity supply chain.

He made that clear Monday, when he tweeted: "Casting of blades and vanes is the most significant limiting factor for power until solar AI satellites are launched at scale."

He isn't kidding about the power bottleneck, adding in a Tuesday interview at a G-20 meeting in North Carolina that there was a "crisis of power."

Strong demand for power-generating equipment is good news for the industry. SpaceX potentially taking business from existing players is bad news. Initially, investors focused on the bad news. Shares of Howmet Aerospace, which casts blades, dropped 7.5% on Monday.

That drop is an opportunity, according to Citi analyst John Godyn. He put a "30-day upside catalyst watch" on Howmet stock in a late-Monday report. A positive catalyst watch means Godyn believes shares will move higher soon.

The recent drop is "a unique and likely short-lived opportunity in shares," he wrote, adding that Musk's announcement "reinforces the critical nature of Howmet parts and...illustrates the exceptional demand Howmet faces in [gas turbines] above/beyond its [roughly] $2B revenue target."

(Howmet is expected to generate 2026 sales of about $10 billion, according to FactSet.)

Godyn rates shares Buy and has a $329 price target, about 30% above recent levels. Howmet stock was up 3.6% in midday trading on Tuesday, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were off 0.4% and 0.2%, respectively.

Others agree with Godyn. Analysts at Bernstein called the dip an opportunity. Deutsche Bank believes SpaceX might partner with an existing player. (Intel is helping with the SpaceX-Tesla semiconductor-making project.)

Overall, Howmet stock remains popular on Wall Street with 79% of analysts rating shares Buy, according to FactSet. The average Buy-rating ratio for S&P 500 stocks typically ranges from 55% to 60%. The average analyst price target for Howmet stock is about $343, which works out to about 53 times estimated 2027 earnings.

It's a rich multiple, but Howmet is good at making very hard parts. Earnings are expected to grow north of 20% a year for the coming few years.

 

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