BHGE - Is Baker Hughes a GE Company a Buy?
It's been a bit of a roller-coaster year for energy services giant Baker Hughes, a GE Company (NYSE: BHGE) and its shareholders. After the stock rallied around 30% at the start of 2019, it has since fallen over 20% from its highs. For the year it is up in the low single digits, but still off some 40% from the highs it reached in late 2017. That's an important date for any investor considering buying Baker Hughes today. The business looks better now than it did back then, despite the steep price decline, but there's still some big issues to contemplate here.
In late 2017, General Electric (NYSE: GE) merged its oil and natural gas operations with Baker Hughes. It was a fairly complex deal that left GE with a 62.5% stake in the combined entity, effectively giving the industrial giant control of Baker Hughes, a GE Company. The marriage of the two got off to a little bit of a rocky start, but that's not unexpected when dealing with such a large and complicated transaction. What was so intriguing about the deal, however, was the broad portfolio of services that Baker Hughes is now able to offer. It calls itself the first and only "fullstream" provider, with services across the upstream (drilling), midstream (pipeline), and downstream (chemicals and refining) spaces.
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