Cramer on BloggingStocks: Fluor shows the power of execution

Posted May 13th 2008 9:00AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Market Matters, International Business Machines (IBM), Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Commodities, Oil, Stocks to Buy, Cramer on BloggingStocks

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this report highlighted where the success lies in this market: energy and petroleum.

Fluor's (NYSE: FLR) (Cramer's Take) a monster. It shows you that what has hurt the other companies, particularly Chicago Bridge & Iron (NYSE: CBI) (Cramer's Take), is pure execution.

This gigantic beat also serves to remind us of the big dichotomy. You are either in the energy and petroleum products game or you are in a lot of games that don't work.

It's not easy for these companies, some of which have lived off the duress of state and local governments, including Shaw (NYSE: SGR) (Cramer's Take) and to a certain extent Aecom (NYSE: ACM) (Cramer's Take) and URS (NYSE: URS) (Cramer's Take), to become oil-and-gas plays.

The only ones that have transcended it beside Fluor are Foster Wheeler (NASDAQ: FWLT) (Cramer's Take) and Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC) (Cramer's Take), and the only reason you would really know that is longevity. I remember in the early 1980s when FLR and then FWC would compete directly for all of the huge projects after the second oil shock.

Fluor's earnings have been obscured by a couple of overrun products over the years, deals that they lowball bid to do embassies basically to fill the order book. That's all changed now, as the company has cycled through those and is now winning huge business and not having a problem converting that business into earnings per share.

Foster Wheeler's doing the same. If it hadn't highlighted a small domestic issue signaling, falsely, to the analysts of problems to come, problems foretold by McDermott (NYSE: MDR) (Cramer's Take), it would be in the $70s by now, too.

I think it is going there.

Today.

Random musings: I am not a fan of the EDS (NYSE: EDS) (Cramer's Take) deal. I am a fan of Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) (Cramer's Take) Mark Hurd so he must see something. I had not thought of IBM (NYSE: IBM) (Cramer's Take) pulling away but it looks like that's been happening.

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Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Foster Wheeler.

Tags: acm, aecom, cbi, chicago bridge and iron, ChicagoBridgeAndIron, eds, featured, flr, fluor, foster wheeler, FosterWheeler, fwlt, hpq, ibm, jacobs engineering, JacobsEngineering, jec, jim cramer, JimCramer, mcdermott, mdr, sgr, shaw, urs