I'm surprised to see that the stock is only down ~7% YTD. I would have thought it would have declined more given its exposure to government contracting. Maybe it has a lot of state-level government contracts that won't disappear.
Im on the opposite. My bet is on: 1. the current leadership wont have time to target trivial wastes like this in the next few years. 2. they shipped something. It may not work or may not exist anymore, but as long as it ships, it puts itself above most of the gov funding targets. If only for the reasons listed in the article, this company will survive well. It's pathetic, but I dont see a reason for gov to drop it in a few years.
They have been grifting taxpayers for decades, and just like "defense contractors", it's a revolving door. Seeing BAH falling to their knees would be poetic, but I am still skeptical that even DOGE can fix that level of grift.
I had flashbacks reading this. If I had Booz Allen stock I would have shorted it too. Years ago I was a FT employee of a private company that was a contractor to federal agencies and for my job I was embedded in a federal building with federal government employees...previously I had worked for tech companies. The agency was so far behind in tech, I thought I might be on a hidden camera show. I worked on a project that exposed all kind of fraud and waste....you know how examples of government spending $15,000 for a hammer type of thing? It's true. I worked on a project to track expensive equipment inventory that should have existed years ago as agencies would just use taxpayer money to buy a piece of equipment because they didn't realize they had it, or a nearby office did. You cannot make this stuff up.
I have never worked with less competent, less intelligent, less tech savvy and more lazy people than those I sat next to. I could do work in 1 hour that would take them 5 days because they didn't care, they were just putting in their time until they could get full retirement at age 59 with full pensions and healthcare the rest of their lives. When I heard of DOGE and read about people freaking out and pushing back on DOGE, my response fire more people and fire faster...In the private sector you could be let go in the blink of an eye and no severance guaranteed, whereas in the Trump administration they were being offered 8 months of their full salary and were told they could just stay home and do nothing. Unbelievable. It has been nearly impossible to fire a government employee even if they are incompetent or have caused problems or committed a crime. A guy showed up in our office one day and we were told he was now a new coworker although he had zero relevancy to our agency. Someone dug around and found out he was sexually harassing women at his other agency and because it is hard to fires feds, he was simply transferred to our agency.
I cheer whenever I read another federal agency has either been shut down entirely or their workforce slashed. I also won't shed a tear for any of the private contractor companies because they were equally part of the grift.
I don't have much to add here other than it feels counterintuitive to bet on government efficiency, even with DOGE focused on it.
very true.
To add to Craig's comment:
I like the write up but:
-betting on government efficiency in November last year was a good idea when Elon was promising trillions of savings.
-BAH is down 32% since Trump got elected in November. Clearly people agreed with this idea.
-DOGE so far seems to be falling very very short of their goals and Elon is stepping away.
Selling now seems like a bad idea to me. It's not even an expensive stock.
A long term bet again government inefficiency seems like a widow maker.
I'm surprised to see that the stock is only down ~7% YTD. I would have thought it would have declined more given its exposure to government contracting. Maybe it has a lot of state-level government contracts that won't disappear.
i'm surprised too. most of Booz's revenue is federal
Im on the opposite. My bet is on: 1. the current leadership wont have time to target trivial wastes like this in the next few years. 2. they shipped something. It may not work or may not exist anymore, but as long as it ships, it puts itself above most of the gov funding targets. If only for the reasons listed in the article, this company will survive well. It's pathetic, but I dont see a reason for gov to drop it in a few years.
They have been grifting taxpayers for decades, and just like "defense contractors", it's a revolving door. Seeing BAH falling to their knees would be poetic, but I am still skeptical that even DOGE can fix that level of grift.
Very interesting - possible to FOIA their meeting frequency, LinkedIn to create sense of leading indicators?
Puts were definitely printing Friday, nice one!
They call it The Swamp for a reason.
I had flashbacks reading this. If I had Booz Allen stock I would have shorted it too. Years ago I was a FT employee of a private company that was a contractor to federal agencies and for my job I was embedded in a federal building with federal government employees...previously I had worked for tech companies. The agency was so far behind in tech, I thought I might be on a hidden camera show. I worked on a project that exposed all kind of fraud and waste....you know how examples of government spending $15,000 for a hammer type of thing? It's true. I worked on a project to track expensive equipment inventory that should have existed years ago as agencies would just use taxpayer money to buy a piece of equipment because they didn't realize they had it, or a nearby office did. You cannot make this stuff up.
I have never worked with less competent, less intelligent, less tech savvy and more lazy people than those I sat next to. I could do work in 1 hour that would take them 5 days because they didn't care, they were just putting in their time until they could get full retirement at age 59 with full pensions and healthcare the rest of their lives. When I heard of DOGE and read about people freaking out and pushing back on DOGE, my response fire more people and fire faster...In the private sector you could be let go in the blink of an eye and no severance guaranteed, whereas in the Trump administration they were being offered 8 months of their full salary and were told they could just stay home and do nothing. Unbelievable. It has been nearly impossible to fire a government employee even if they are incompetent or have caused problems or committed a crime. A guy showed up in our office one day and we were told he was now a new coworker although he had zero relevancy to our agency. Someone dug around and found out he was sexually harassing women at his other agency and because it is hard to fires feds, he was simply transferred to our agency.
I cheer whenever I read another federal agency has either been shut down entirely or their workforce slashed. I also won't shed a tear for any of the private contractor companies because they were equally part of the grift.