TheStreet.com TV Recap: Goldman's Still Got It
TheStreet.com Staff
12/18/07 - 02:34 PM EST
Goldman Sachs' (GS Quote) record-breaking numbers don't matter, because if they did, the stock wouldn't be down, Jim Cramer said on TheStreet.com TV's Wall St. Confidential Web video Tuesday.
"This is a unique moment," he said. "It's a really bad market for the financials. It really doesn't matter what a company says -- the fact that it's a financial means that it's going to be overly compensated down."
Goldman is buying a huge amount of stock, it's bought back a huge amount of stock, and it's delivered "an unbelievable quarter in the hardest environment imaginable," Cramer went on. "I do not think the environment will be this bad a year from now, so I think that you should buy it."
Cramer said on Friday's "Mad Money" game plan segment, that Goldman, which he owns for his charitable trust,
Action Alerts PLUS, would report a great number and that the market wouldn't like it.
The reason Cramer knew the market wouldn't like it is "because right now the market is being dominated by bears and they're able to spread very quickly that there was a line that was bad in Goldman -- this time it was investment banking -- and they're also able to say that they made it through compensation being down."
All of this, he said, is nonsense. The fact is the company's revenues are there and its compensation structure is a good one. It had a lot of one-time gains, which people don't tend to like, but the investment banking business is full of one-time gains, Cramer said.
"It's why the multiple is what it is," he explained. "You could argue that it should be at eight times earnings, which would still put it at a substantially higher price than it is, 40 points higher.
"What I am saying is that when you get a stock that sells at eight times next year's earnings, or in this case, now you're starting to talk seven times, you will be surprised about what comes up that will make them money," Cramer said. "These are not static companies, they're dynamic companies. I suspect that 60% to 70% of Goldman's business five years from now will be international."
Cramer believes Goldman is a buy, but he also knows that when people buy it, they'll be down immediately.
"If you look at the snapshot, it's a sell," he said. "If you look at where I think it can go and what's happened in this business historically ... then you want to buy it.
"No one wants to be down for three days, but how about being up for three months?"
