CNH Sees Number Of Shares Shift & Announces IN Expansion
During the fourth quarter of 2012, Southeastern Management, a large mutual fund managed by billionaire Mason Hawkins, initiated a position of 1.5 million shares in CNH Global CNH +2.70%, a $10 billion market cap manufacturer of farm and construction machinery. The fund has continued buying stock in CNH, with a recent 13G filing revealing that it now owns 3.7 million shares or a little over 12% of the total shares outstanding.
In the first quarter of 2013, CNH recorded a 21% increase in its earnings versus a year earlier. Revenue was up only slightly over the same time frame. It is unlikely that the company will be able to continue growing its net income slowly through improving its margins, and as a result we’d be skeptical about how sustainable this earnings growth will turn out to be unless the top line picks up as well.
Another major investor in CNH at the end of December was billionaire Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors, which reported a position of 2.2 million shares.
CNH Parts & Service, the product support division of CNH Global NV, plans a $13.3 million expansion in Lebanon, IN that will result in 100 new jobs by 2014, the company announced.
Racine, Wis.-based CNH, which already has more than 500 full-time employees and 200 contract employees in Lebanon, said it will lease and equip an additional 153,000-square-foot facility in Lebanon Business Park, bringing its total footprint at the site to 1.2 million square feet in three buildings. When it becomes fully operational in 2014, the new facility will serve as the command-and-control operation for CNH’s parts-delivery system. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered CNH up to $650,000 in conditional tax credits and as much as $100,000 in training grants based on the company’s job-creation plans. Lebanon approved additional tax abatement at the request of the Boone County Economic Development Corp.