After his latest buys of Q1 2015, Guru Larry Robbins (Trades, Portfolio) keeps on increasing his stake in Manitowoc Co Inc (MTW) even in June (Q2), according to GuruFocus real time picks.
In March he bought the stock for the first time, and now he increased his stake by 11.61% at an average price of $19.3 reaching a total of 9,614,197 shares held. After this buy the Investor is still the second main holder of MTW after Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) who owns 10,582,660 shares.
It is a multi-industry, capital goods manufacturer operating in two principal markets: Cranes and Related Products (Crane) and Foodservice Equipment (Foodservice). The Crane products are marketed under the Manitowoc, Grove, Potain, National and Manitowoc Crane CARE brand names and are used in a variety of applications, including energy, petrochemical and industrial projects, infrastructure development such as road, bridge and airport construction, commercial and high-rise residential construction. The company's Foodservice business is a manufacturer of commercial foodservice equipment.
The company is trading with a P/E ratio of 18.40. This ratio is at the average level of the company’s industry; in fact the Global Farm & Construction Equipment industry has an industry median of 17.70 as P/E. Over the last eight months the price has fluctuated between $16.70 and $22.80; it took a pause after a downward trend started in July, and that dropped the price by about 30%
The company profitability and growth is 6/10 with positive but not thrilling returns. A ROE of 17.69 that is performing better than 82% of company’s competitors is facing a good growth rate if compared to five years back when the company had a negative ROE of 13.69%. Even the return on assets turned positive to 3.62% (five years back was -1.80%).
After the last quarter, we can say that the company remains concerned with some areas of its business. While results for Cranes were almost in line with their expectations (and seasonality of this business), the foodservice had a bad performance due to some bad results in its KitchenCare business, amplified by reduced CapEx spending by large chains. The company is working hard to correct these problems and after few months is seeing improvements in KitchenCare fill rates, speed and accuracy and they expect better results by the second half of the year.
During the past quarter, Larry Robbins (Trades, Portfolio) was not the only guru that bought shares of MTW. Even Alan Fournier (Trades, Portfolio), Murray Stahl (Trades, Portfolio), Paul Tudor Jones (Trades, Portfolio), and Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) did the same.
