Cramer Goes To War (LMT, ATK, RTN)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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On tonight’s MAD MONEY on CNBC, Jim Cramer said that he thinks defense and aerospace is becoming the seventh bull market.  He thinks that the recent huge contract to Saudi Arabia for military orders will be a big win.  Saudi Arabia gets $20 Billion in defense and over $30 Billion is being granted to Israel in US defense grants.  Cramer also thinks Democrats would spend a lot on defense to look strong and we spend more than anyone else by far for defense.  Cramer gave Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) last week.  He’s got two more great US defense contractor plays for the sector:

The first play is Alliant Tech (NYSE:ATK) as the largest bullet manufacturer and is in big into projectiles of all sorts.  He thinks it is cheap at 1.3-times growth and he thinks numbers could come up with an upside surprise because of its share buyback plan.  This reports Thursday, so Cramer noted to only put on a half position so you don’t have the earnings exposure as bad.  Alliant was my number one defense stock for the BAIT SHOP in takeover candidates (see post here), although I haven’t updated that position in a while.

Cramer’s favorite defense play is Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) because it is the most leveraged name to defense spending, and because it is the cheapest according to his growth rate over P/E analysis.  He isn’t looking for a buyout or anything, but it won two big contracts in June that will help with visibility.  It also raised fiscal guidance and has a great balance sheet with debt retirement and share buybacks.

Jon C. Ogg
July 31, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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