On October 5, 2015 Trian Partners, an activist investment partnership run by Nelson Peltz, announced they had built a 2 ½ billion dollars stake in industrial company General Electric (GE). Trian’s holdings and GE make it the firm’s largest investment and make Trian Partners one of the top 10 holders of GE stock.
In addition to a press release, Trian partners released a presentation detailing their rationale behind their investment in GE. According to this presentation, Trian Partners believes that GE stock can climb to between $40 and $45 per share by the end of 2017. This valuation is roughly in line with IOI’s best case scenario for GE published in January of this year.
Trian’s way of thinking about GE is different the way IOI analyzes GE in some respects, but reading through the presentation it is clear that we agree at a high level as to why GE is attractively valued right now.