Excerpted comments by Jim Cramer on ADM - from theStreet.com 5/11/06
thestreet.com
Each week listeners vote on what stock they want to hear about, and this week the "Cramer on Demand" stock was Archer Daniels Midland (ADM:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take).
The stock has gone up 146% in the last year after doing nothing for about 20 years, he said, and that's thanks to the fact that ethanol is the alternative fuel of the moment.
"The company had been promulgating the notion that we should be using ethanol, a not-powerful, not-good source of additive to gasoline, for many years," he said. But the resistance to ethanol use has changed because oil prices went up enough to make it competitive, despite the fact that it doesn't burn as well as oil and that it corrodes pipelines.
It's not a great fuel, but the entities in favor of ethanol are in states that are very powerful in Congress, he said. For example, MBTE was added to gasoline to improve the fuel, but it pollutes ground water; and these politicians pushed to have ethanol replace MBTE.
The only company that makes ethanol on a large scale is Archer Daniels Midland, Cramer said, which is why the stock moves higher anytime you hear about more acceptance of ethanol.
Plus, he believes that the company's new chief executive, Patricia Woertz, will be adept at getting ethanol to gas stations, thanks to her experience working for Chevron |
