What Do the World’s Greatest Investors Think of This Metamorphizing Conglomerate

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General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) is selling General Electric Railcar Services LLC and railcar leasing business to Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC). The deal will add 1,000 locomotives and 77,000 railcars to Wells Fargo’s fleet and will make Warren Buffett‘s favorite bank the second-largest locomotive and railcar lessor in North America. Although the terms of the transaction were not disclosed, shares of General Electric shares are up by 0.28% and shares of Wells Fargo & Co are 0.29% in green in early morning trade. Let’s take a closer look at the company Thomas Edison founded and see how the world’s greatest investors view the stock.

Biggest Logistics Companies in the World

In the eyes of most traders, hedge funds are assumed to be underperforming, old investment tools of the past. While there are more than 8,000 funds in operation at present, hedge fund experts at Insider Monkey look at the aristocrats of this group, around 700 funds. Contrary to the popular belief, our research has revealed that hedge funds have lagged in recent years because of their short positions as well as the huge fees that they charge. However, hedge funds managed to outperform the market on the long side of their portfolio. In fact, the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds returned 118% since the end of August 2012 and beat the S&P 500 Index by 60 percentage points (see the details here).

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The CEO of GE Capital commented:

“We’re pleased to sell our railcar business and, separately, our tank car fleet and railcar repair shops, to buyers that are long-term players in the industry committed to expanding the businesses.”

General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) has been shrinking its financial operations as it goes back to its industrial and technological roots. The sale of the company’s railcar leasing business to Wells Fargo marks just the latest financial divestment in a long line of financial divestitures for GE. The company sold a $3.6 billion loan portfolio to Apollo Global’s MidCap Financial earlier in the week and divested $23 billion in real estate assets to Wells Fargo and Blackstone Group in April. Overall, GE plans to trim around $200 billion of financial assets from its balance sheet.

Hedge funds are bullish on General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Of the around 730 elite funds we track, 70 funds owned $3.72 billion of the company’s shares (representing 1.40% of the float) at the end of June, versus 62 funds and $3.13 billion respectively a quarter earlier. Ken Fisher‘s Fisher Asset Management increased its position by 2% to 30.71 million shares, while Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management raised its stake by 35% to 19.35 million shares. Moreover, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management established a new position of 3.1 million shares, while Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway kept its position unchanged at 10.59 million shares.

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