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IDEX Corporation (IEX): Among Billionaire Ken Fisher's Industrial Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential

IDEX Corporation (IEX): Among Billionaire Ken Fisher's Industrial Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential

Yahoo01-05-2025
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) stands against other billionaire Ken Fisher's industrial stock picks with huge upside potential.
The economy strongly influences industrial stocks, which have fallen during recent downturns. However, 2025 looks like a key year for this sector, with these companies working in manufacturing, shipping, and aerospace, and investors are now focusing on businesses that adapt quickly to global shifts. The industrial sector grew 26% in 2024, showing strength despite high inflation and weak global demand. Going into 2025, these stocks are getting more attention thanks to new growth drivers and better economic conditions.
Even with possible higher tariffs under Trump's trade policies, the outlook remains positive. President Trump has proposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum from countries like South Korea, Vietnam, and Canada. These tariffs might raise costs and also boost U.S. infrastructure and manufacturing spending; as Canada's Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said,
'Canadian steel and aluminum support key industries in the U.S., from defense, shipbuilding, and auto. We will continue to stand up for Canada, our workers, and our industries.'
All in all, this trade shift could help American industrial companies, especially those bringing supply chains back home.
Moreover, lower interest rates should help the sector by increasing construction and housing projects in 2025. On the other hand, falling mortgage rates will attract more homebuyers, creating demand for building materials and equipment. Ken Fisher said, 'Investors are ignoring some of these positive developments,' pointing to an overlooked chance in housing-related businesses.
Aerospace is also making a comeback through airlines' need to replace aging planes, driving demand for maintenance and parts, which demonstrates significant progress in aerospace-based companies. Meanwhile, only 25% of the $1.9 trillion in planned North American infrastructure projects have started construction, suggesting big growth ahead for equipment providers and construction companies.
In 2025, industrial stocks look promising due to clean technology and automation advancements. As reported in Deloitte's 2025 Manufacturing Industry Outlook, over $31 billion went into clean-tech manufacturing facilities in 2024, showing a move toward sustainability. With decreasing interest rates and high demand for environmentally friendly tech, these investments are highly probable to drive growth in the industry. Ken Fisher noted made the following comment about the current situation:
'The fear is bigger than the problem can be. Single-period stock market comparisons are always iffy, but it may well be this goes something like the 1998 stock market correction leading to a 26% annual return.'
His view suggests a more positive review of the industrial sector, predicting it will grow despite tariff concerns. With investments in automation, clean tech, and domestic production, these stocks have strong long-term potential even with short-term challenges.
To compile this list, we reviewed Ken Fisher's SEC Q4 2024 13F filings. We picked 10 stocks with the highest upside potential from their current levels as of time of writing this article. Finally, we ranked the stocks in ascending order based on their highest analyst upside potential while also outlining hedge fund sentiment regarding these stocks, as per Insider Monkey's database of Q4 2024.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A worker in a laboratory coat checking a Positive Displacement Pump.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 34
Upside Potential: 27.97%
IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) delivers key industrial solutions in fluid management, life sciences, and safety tech. It works through three main segments: Fluid & Metering Technologies, Health & Science Technologies, and Fire & Safety/Diversified Products. The company serves vital markets like life sciences, semiconductors, chemical processing, firefighting, and aerospace with pumps, valves, and specialty systems. IDEX ranks among the top industrial tech stocks for investors, and Ken Fisher currently owns about $2,891,859 in company shares.
In the Q4 ended December 31, 2024, IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) showed $863 million in revenue, up 9% from last year, with organic sales growing 3%. Meanwhile, orders jumped 8%, helping boost quarterly adjusted EBITDA margin by 60 basis points to 26.4%. Yet 2024's full-year revenue stayed flat at $3.3 billion, with organic sales dropping 2%, and adjusted earnings per share fell 4% to $7.89. The company generated strong free cash flow of $603 million, converting 101% of adjusted net income.
Furthermore, the Health & Science Technologies segment led Q4 order activity, shipping $40 million in project work, while the company's Fire & Safety/Diversified Products hit record quarterly sales. Management highlighted integration across five collaborative groups, making up over half of the total revenue. Despite tough market conditions, strong blanket orders from Q4 should boost 2025 volume. The semiconductor market is also expected to improve in the second half of next year.
For 2025, IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) expects 1-3% organic growth with adjusted earnings between $8.10 and $8.45 per share—a 3-7% increase over 2024. The first quarter will likely see a 3-4% organic decline due to tough comparisons with last year. However, management expects a $0.43 earnings boost from platform improvements. The company plans $21-25 million in restructuring costs, with revenue and earnings weighted toward the year's second half.
IDEX continues focusing on strategic acquisitions, with its recent Mott acquisition doing better than expected. With a solid balance sheet and 2.2x gross leverage ratio, IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) keeps looking for good deals—80% of its recent acquisitions were proprietary deals.
Overall, IEX ranks 6th on our list of billionaire Ken Fisher's industrial stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of IEX, our conviction lies in the belief that certain AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than IEX but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in the East Room at the White House on February 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in the East Room at the White House on February 7, 2025 in Washington, It Matters Trump has said he will make deals that benefit both sides, hailing his unique abilities to do so. But the intense "America First" messaging surrounding Trump's deals poses a challenge for U.S. trading partners. They must balance Trump's demands against their own national interests, economic needs, and views of voters, while projecting a degree of strength and independence to show they are securing gains and not merely surrendering to Washington. The Japanese deal, whose advantages to the U.S. Trump has heavily emphasized, highlights the potential vulnerability of these agreements to domestic politics. Trump's Japan Trade Deal The deal was struck ahead of Trump's August 1 deadline, when, in a letter to Ishiba, he had said Japanese imports would face a 25 percent tariff in the U.S. if negotiations failed to bear fruit. Trump had previously questioned the strategic U.S.-Japan partnership, including a long-standing security agreement with its key East Asian ally, citing what he said was an unfair set of trading terms because the Japanese market was too closed off to Americans. Trade talks between the two sides had been stuck on imports of American rice in particular. But negotiations continued, and Trump revealed the deal in a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, July 22. Trump said Japan had agreed "at my direction" to invest $550 billion into the U.S.—spanning energy, semiconductors, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, and shipbuilding—but that 90 percent of the profits from these would be kept by the U.S. He also said Japan would open up to American car and truck exports, rice and other agricultural products, and more goods. Japan would still face a 15 percent tariff, Trump said, but U.S. businesses will have a zero tariff. Among the specific measures in the deal are a Japanese commitment to immediately increase rice imports from the U.S. by 75 percent and a Japanese purchase of 100 Boeing aircraft, according to a White House fact sheet. Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba attends a press conference at the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) headquarters on July 21, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan. Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba attends a press conference at the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) headquarters on July 21, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan. Philip Fong - Pool/ Getty Images Japan's CDP Will 'Carefully Scrutinize' Trump Deal Kazuhiko Shigetoku, a lawmaker in the Diet's lower house from the opposition CDP, told Newsweek that the deal means "the uncertainty of the economic outlook has eased." "However, in terms of the perspective of the national interest, we need to carefully scrutinize the content of the agreement to determine whether it is satisfactory and how it will affect the Japanese economy," Shigetoku said. "We will determine our future actions based on explanations from the government at the Diet and other meetings. Although the need for congressional approval is unclear at this stage, we believe that it is important to maintain and expand free trade." Mixed Reactions in Japan Ishiba's recent election loss was driven in large part by voter frustration with rising prices while wage growth is slow. His weakened minority government must now push through a hard-fought trade agreement, one that Trump has touted as a major win for the U.S. "Early reactions among Japanese lawmakers have been mixed, with the Ishiba administration touting the deal as a success and members of the opposition claiming it is bad for the Japanese economy," Kristi Govella, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Newsweek. "For Japanese people, trade negotiations with the U.S. have been seen as a litmus test of the current government's leadership ability, so politicians are currently fighting to control the narrative about how good this deal really is for Japan." Kazuto Suzuki, professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and director of the Institute of Geoeconomics at International House of Japan, said the Trump deal was "well received by both the ruling and opposition parties." "Given that many lawmakers did not expect the Ishiba administration to succeed in reaching an agreement, the fact that it was achieved came as a surprise," Suzuki told Newsweek. "Moreover, while it was considered difficult to lower tariffs on automobiles and automobile parts, the fact that they were reduced to 15 percent is highly regarded. "However, this does not compensate for the major defeat in the Upper House election on July 20, and criticism of Prime Minister Ishiba is growing." He added: "It is unlikely that the Diet will reject this agreement. If it were to reject it, higher tariffs would inevitably be imposed, which would benefit no one." Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba delivers his policy speech during a plenary session at the lower house of parliament on January 24, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba delivers his policy speech during a plenary session at the lower house of parliament on January 24, 2025, in Tokyo, National Interest Govella said opposition parties "have a great deal of incentive to criticize the trade deal and to capitalize on the weakness of the Ishiba government," but "actually blocking the deal's approval could backfire badly." Higher tariffs "would have significantly worse impacts on the Japanese economy and on Japanese people who are already feeling the effects of inflation," she said. Japanese voters have "generally been skeptical about the opposition's ability to lead" after their experience with the Democratic Party of Japan from 2009 to 2012, she continued. "So if the current opposition parties are perceived to be acting against Japan's national interest by blocking this deal, they could lose the supporters they've recently gained," Govella said. What People Are Saying President Trump posted to Truth Social: "We just completed a massive Deal with Japan, perhaps the largest Deal ever made … This is a very exciting time for the United States of America, and especially for the fact that we will continue to always have a great relationship with the Country of Japan." Prime Minister Ishiba told reporters, per The Wall Street Journal: "The government was determined to protect national interests," adding that the deal "will lead to Japan and the U.S. working together to create jobs, produce high-quality goods, and contribute to fulfilling various roles in the world going forward." What's Next Japanese lawmakers are scrutinizing the trade deal with the U.S.. They are unlikely to block it should they be called to vote on some or all of its components, though the Ishiba government no longer has a majority in either house of the Diet, complicating its passage.

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