Why a great company's beat and raise was sold, and what I plan to do with the stock

CNBC

9 hours ago

When is a beat and raise not a beat and raise? That's a question that has frustrated us this earnings season. Case in point: How about Honeywell 's beat and raise last week? Here's a conglomerate splitting into three different companies, which also has a quantum computing business that's probably more advanced than any of the publicly traded quantum entities. Honeywell has an amazing aerospace business that handles the cockpit for most commercial airlines and a host of other accoutrements, including propulsion. It will very much participate in the aerospace boom and is only being held back by how many planes Boeing is allowed to make each month. That number will be going up soon. The automation business is about, among other things, industrial cybersecurity, smart grid, and regulated energy. There are underperforming divisions that if they are not fixed will be sold. The chemicals and materials businesses, including sustainable refrigerants, chemicals needed to make semiconductors and materials for carbon capture. Boring stuff but stuff that tends to be No. 1 in its category. The advanced materials business seems to be the legacy of Allied Chemical, which became Allied Signal, before merging with Honeywell. On last week's earnings call , management updated the timing on the breakup, saying the spinoff of advanced materials will happen in the fourth quarter. The other two are slated for the second half of 2026. At no point will these divisions be static. When there is something that can be done to make each better, it will be done, like the acquisition of Carrier 's global security business for $4.9 billion last year, a great price because Carrier needed to get to investment grade and did so by selling the division to Honeywell. Vimal Kapur, who became Honeywell's CEO in June 2023, takes after Dave Cote, the CEO before Darius Adamczyk. Cote is a legendary figure when it comes to creating value. I give you that history because Honeywell's stock, as of Friday's close, was down 0.7% year to date versus the S & P 500 's gain of 8.6% in 2025. Shares of Honeywell are trading nowhere near where they will trade as the split comes to fruition. Oddly, if it weren't breaking up, I think, at this point, it would trade higher than it does right now after that astonishing collapse last week based on, well, nothing. There was a margin issue in one division that will be fixed. There were two underperforming segments that will most likely go. There will be three companies that will either stand on their own or be bought by private equity, although the scarcity in aerospace company coupled with a pro-merger Federal Trade Commission will probably make that company a takeover target almost immediately. HON 1M mountain Honeywell 1-month performance While I have no idea why Honeywell's stock really collapsed, I can take the conspiratorial view, that some of the hedge funds who were short Kohl's decided to blow me up using a complex method of call buying and shorting. I know it seems phantasmagorical. But, when I started my Charitable Trust, whose holdings make up the CNBC Investing Club portfolio, I played open-handed and took fire quite often — even dealing with some who hinted that's exactly what they were doing. That's a dangerous game. I know what I am doing. I make mistakes, but a company like Honeywell — and Dover and DuPont , for that matter — are not among them. The Club owns all three. Another possible reason: Honeywell's structure could be too hard to understand. There are a huge number of divisions within divisions. You could ChatGPT these all day long and not figure out how they come together. But that's OK. That's what is being rectified by the planned split. But all of them are part of the reshoring and the reindustrialization of America. When you hear President Donald Trump getting $550 billion from the Japanese, Honeywell will get its share, whether it is from plane orders, or industrial buildings, or the myriad chemicals it takes to make things safely. Honeywell's split could be too far off. We call it spin purgatory , a period where nothing happens other than the back off separation of the divisions. Like with Honeywell, we're seeing that happen in DuPont, too, which trades like death. So, did Kenvue , when Johnson & Johnson spun it off. There's all of this red tape about new boards and new procedures that aren't everyday occurrences. No one can explain the length of time it takes. But it takes time and people aren't patient. They really want to wait until they see the whites of their separation eyes. It could also be the lack of real data center exposure. The only industrials that are working are the ones with data center exposure. While building automation within Honeywell has some, it is obviously not enough. What's my conviction based on then? How can I believe in Honeywell's stock, which does a beat and raise and it gets clobbered anyway; or that it has had a previous ones that were also poorly received, too? I give you a few reasons. First, discouragement is not a good quality to base an investment decision on. That's what I did with Emerson . It had two shortfalls, and I decided that its reorganization based around electrification wasn't going to work. I bolted after the second one. My total bad. They got it together even after a hostile bid that they won, and this very difficult to understand ugly duckling became a swan. I felt the same way with Oracle . The company had made a somewhat dispiriting acquisition of medical records company Cerner, and I had no idea what the hell that was about. Then it decided to get into data centers. Not once, but twice, they disappointed in their data center goal. I was livid. So, I kicked it out. It then ran higher. I had isolated two fantastic stock ideas. And, just when they got hammered a second time, I fled, right before they were recognized as great situations by everyone. I can't let that happen again. Curiously, the pain was the greatest after that second miss, when people were truly fed up. This one is the worst and, yet, I would argue it wasn't as bad a miss, if it were a miss at all. Second, people don't believe that Kapur can actually improve each of the three companies that are developing. They fear lost focus. They fear economic cycles. They fear that he is in the "wrong" industries even as private equity firms are routinely in the wrong industries, yet they are fine. Kapur knows how to multitask. Three, there is tremendous fright here in the way Honeywell stock trades, The moves are particularly vicious. They are from peak to trough, tremendously ugly, devoid of any support whatsoever. I wish I had an answer to this one. All I can say is that the decline has to be bought because the overreaction is ridiculous. I know when a stock is down nearly 14 points on a given day, as it was after Thursday's earnings print, it is typically not done going down. The selling from the previous day tends not to be finished. Too many sellers. And, that's what happened. Friday's opening hours were hideous as the sellers from Thursday finished. The stock market typically gives you clues about what a stock will do. When I find a stock breaking down as much as Honeywell, I know the queue to get out is a deep one and the process, if heavy institutional selling, means that a broker usually buys stock to work it by finding clients. If they can't be found you get what you got Thursday and Friday, the brokers just throw out what's left. Hence the Day 2 ugliness. Barring some craziness from the president, Honeywell is recharged and ready to go because, you see, it was a beat and raise. It was real — as will the next move. Bottom line So, what am I doing? Standing pat initially, waiting for my restrictions to run out. Remember, when I mention a stock on television, the Club must wait three days to trade it. Then, I am going to buy some because I am being given a chance to do so, like I did with Oracle and Emerson, and I didn't take them. Were they unique? Who knows? I do know this. I had done the work. I had conviction. Out of pique and frustration, I gave up. I am doing the opposite this time. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) 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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