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Jim Cramer's Stop Trading! Buy Halliburton

TheStreet.com Staff

03/20/07 - 03:00 PM EDT

It's time to buy Halliburton (HAL) in spite of Tuesday's warning-related selloff, Jim Cramer said on CNBC's Stop Trading! segment.

Cramer said he would buy Halliburton because it's about to start a $3 billion buyback next week and because the company is so cheap and so loaded with cash that it should go private. He added that the company's decision this month to move CEO Dave Lesar to Dubai shows the company understands that it is "way too levered to North America," which Cramer said it a losing proposition in the oil drilling business.

"I would buy into the buyback," Cramer said with the stock off 8% at $30. "I see no reason for this stock to be public."

Other solid, cash-producing, unloved companies in the same boat include food servicer Sysco (SYY), information servicer Ceridian (CEN) and restaurant chain Landry's (LNY).

Cramer said Landry's "reminds me of Dollar General (DG)," which agreed last week to be taken private by KKR. He called Sysco a "great service company" that could do an LBO in the "blueprint of Aramark," the Philadelphia-based food concessionaire that went private last year.

Cramer said news that Motorola (MOT) chief Ed Zander canceled an appearance at next week's CTIA wireless conference shows that we may be ready to see "the next level of saber rattling" from big shareholder Carl Icahn. Cramer called him the "single best force in capitalism today" and said Zander "better listen."


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