This past week, Russia invaded Ukraine. The crisis marks the highest level of geopolitical tensions in Europe in decades.
So far, Russia’s advance has been stalled due to unexpected strong Ukrainian resistance. At the same time, while the US and its allies haven’t intervened on the ground, they have been supplying arms and financial backing. They have also imposed sanctions and have now cut off a number of Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system, thereby severely restricting Russia’s trade capabilities.
Financial markets are reacting, of course, in a variety of ways. The price of oil is up and at a level not seen since 2014. The Russian stock market has simply collapsed, as has the ruble against the dollar. On Wall Street, stocks fell sharply as the Ukraine crisis grew in recent weeks, and since the Russian invasion have swung wildly down and then up.
Volatile times like these usually bring opportunities for investors, if you know where to look. One obvious place to start: stocks in defense companies.
Using the TipRanks platform, we’ve looked up several defense stocks that fit a profile: each gets a Buy rating from Wall Street’s analysts, and each has a double-digit upside for the year ahead. Here are the details.
CACI International (CACI)
First up is CACI International, an information tech company offering a wide range of services to multiple Federal Government departments, including Defense and Homeland Security. The company’s services include digital solutions for engineering services and enterprise IT, with applications in command and control systems, AI and deep learning, secure cloud, robotics and automation, and network modeling and simulation.
While CACI devotes a large portion of its business to the defense industry, it has significant civilian contracts, as well. In one recent boost for the company’s civil aerospace technology business, CACI announced this month that it had delivered a high-bandwidth free-space optical modem for use in low Earth orbit – a key component of the International Space Station communications…
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