GE, Alstom, Amtrak -- Nothing About The Bakken -- August 27, 2016

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Udpates

August 28, 2016: a reader sent a link to this story -- GE's "digital revolution."

G.E. has some built-in advantages. Its installed base is huge. For example, the company says more than a third of the world’s electricity is generated on G.E. equipment. It can make progress simply by winning over the aircraft makers, oil companies, hospitals and utilities that now depend on G.E. machinery.

G.E. is starting to attract a developer following. Tata Consultancy Services, for one, says it now has 500 programmers designing and developing Predix applications for customers in the electric-utility, aviation and health care industries. G.E. also promotes partnerships with Infosys, Wipro and Capgemini to help business write Predix software.

In my original post, "electricity from all sources." Then in this NY Times article, more than a third of the world's electricity is generated on GE equipment. 

By the way, note the photograph of the idyllic NY stream that accompanied this article and not the GE turbine power plant just upstream. Had this been an article on the oil sector, one could imagine a photograph of an oil spill. 

Original Post

 

The other day I mentioned that I have changed my investment strategy a bit, but just before changing that strategy, I had embarked on acquiring more shares of GE on a regular basis. I think GE, long term, is going to do very well in energy (wind, oil, natural gas, electricity from all sources).

Within 24 or 48 hours of posting that, I came across this New York Times article: Amtrak's answer for its aging Acela fleet: 160 mph trains.

A new era of high-speed train travel is coming to the nation’s busiest rail corridor.

Federal officials on Friday announced a $2.45 billion loan to Amtrak for the purchase of state-of-the-art trains to replace the aging Acela trains that use the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston.

Amtrak plans to put the first of 28 new trains into service in about five years. Once they are fully deployed, officials expect the Acela to depart every half-hour between Washington and New York and every hour between New York and Boston. That should increase passenger capacity by about 40 percent, they said.

While the new trains will not approach the speeds of some Asian and European trains, officials said they hoped that the new Acela would travel at 160 miles per hour in some places, up from 135 m.p.h. now. The trains will theoretically be able to go faster than 160 m.p.h., though that would require a huge upgrade of the track system.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a longtime Amtrak supporter who frequently travels by train between Washington and his home in Delaware, announced the loan at the station in Wilmington that is named in his honor.

Now, why would that catch my attention? And why would I blog about it?

Because:

The new trains will be manufactured in New York State by Alstom, a French company that builds high-speed trains around the globe.

So?

Well, it turns out that a division of Alstom, its "power" division was recently bought by GE: GE completes Alstom Power acquistion.

The Street called GE's acquisition of Alstom Power its "best deal in a century."

The CEO predicts GE's industrial segments -- from wind farms to locomotives and jet engines -- will compose 90% of the conglomerate's total revenue by 2018, a substantial leap from 58% last year, according to an annual regulatory filing.

Something tells me Alstom will subcontract the locomotives to GE. Could be wrong.

But for me this is what is important:

• the blog keeps me interested in things I might not otherwise follow; and,
• readers send me links to stories I might not find on my own.

By the way, about four months ago, my wife and I were "lost" out near the Texas Motor Speedway when we happened to notice some brand new BNSF locomotives in what looked like a manufacturing  / industrial park, with a huge "GE" loco on one of the buildings. From The Star-Telegram awhile back:

FORT WORTH -- General Electric’s locomotive plant in far north Fort Worth is putting a strain on the company’s relationship with one of its Pennsylvania-based unions.

The plant, which opened in 2012 near Texas Motor Speedway, employs more than 500 people and builds railroad locomotives and mining equipment. 

The facility, near Texas 114 and Farm Road 156, cranks out an average of 1.2 locomotives per day, a plant manager has said, and those vehicles are bought by customers such as Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, based in Omaha, Nebraska.

But workers at the Fort Worth plant aren’t union members, and that has caused some heartburn among union representatives in GE’s much older locomotive plant in Erie, PA.