Ford, Phillips 66, Yum! Brands, and Two Other Stocks Are in Spotlight Today for Various Reasons

Investors are in a profit-taking mode today as all three major indexes are a bit lower, with the NASDAQ leading the way, with declines of 0.56%. Among the stocks trending this morning are several industrial companies, two energy companies and one famous restaurant chain.

Let’s examine the catalysts causing traders to talk about Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), Phillips 66 Partners LP (NYSE:PSXP), Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX), Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM), and General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) and analyze the hedge fund sentiment toward the stocks.

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Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) is in the spotlight today after the company announced that it will shutter its Michigan Mustang factory, which makes all Mustangs sold world-wide, for a week due to soft demand. Domestic sales for Mustangs dropped by 32% in the last month, allowing the rival Chevrolet Camaro to outsell the iconic car for the first time in over a year. While its Mustang sales haven’t been doing so well, Ford’s China sales are doing just fine, as they spiked by 24% year-over-year in September, and are now up by 11% year-to-date. Richard S. Pzena‘s Pzena Investment Management raised its stake in Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) by 1% to just over 18.45 million shares during the second quarter .

Two energy companies are trending after Phillips 66 Partners LP (NYSE:PSXP) agreed to buy 30 crude, refined products and natural gas liquids logistics assets from Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) for a total consideration of $1.3 billion. The deal is expected to be immediately accretive to Phillips 66 Partners unitholders and the company plans to fund the purchase with a combination of debt and $196 million in new units issued to Phillips 66. In connection with the purchase, Phillips 66 plans to enter into 10-year throughput and terminaling agreements that will include minimum volume commitments covering around 85% of forecasted volumes. Of the around 749 funds that we track, five funds were long Phillips 66 Partners LP (NYSE:PSXP) and 26 held shares of Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) on June 30.

On the next page, we examine Yum! Brands, and General Electric Company.
Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) shares are almost 3% in the green after the company announced that it intends to be more focused, more franchised, and more efficient going forward during its annual investor conference day. Yum plans to increase franchise restaurant ownership to at least 98% by fiscal year ending 2018 from the current 77% (and 93% at the time of separation of the China business). Yum also intends to reduce capital expenditures from $500 million annually to $100 million by 2019 and to maintain an optimized capital structure of around 5x EBITDA leverage. Yum plans to return $13.5 billion in capital when including dividends back to shareholders between the fourth quarter 2015 and 2019. A total of 46 funds tracked by us had a bullish position in Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) at the end of June, down by five funds from the previous quarter.

Traders are talking about General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) after the industrial conglomerate announced its intention to buy LM Wind Power, a Denmark-based manufacturer and supplier of rotor blades to the wind industry, for $1.65 billion or about 8.3 times pro forma earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (2016 estimate). GE’s management believes the deal will be accretive in 2018 and will help the company capture more value in the fast growing and promising renewable energy sector. The number of funds from our database with holdings in General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) fell by seven quarter-over-quarter to 57 at the end of June.

Disclosure: None