英文【Jefferies】杰富瑞策略——对公用事业的深入探讨

USA | Equity StrategyEquity ResearchJune 10, 2025 Steven G. DeSanctis, CFA *  | Equity Strategist(212) 284-2056 | sdesanctis@jefferies.comJane Gibbons *  | Equity Associate(212) 778-8657 | jgibbons1@jefferies.comJEF's Strategy—A Deeper Dive Across UtilitiesSentiment remains strong to Utilities with inflows into its ETFs, group has heldup since Fed cut rates relative to indexes. JEF strategy team has divergingviews—OW in large, UW small. Higher for longer hurts sector, valuationsexpensive, but not much has changed to earnings forecasts. Surprised thata slower economy is NOT a big boost to group's relative performance. FTSERussell rebalancing season upon us, only a few names see significant buy\sellpressure.Sentiment has been very strong and provides a nice tailwind for the group: The sector has stillbeen getting a lot of attention, as many of the stocks will help with the AI build out. Due to this, thegroup's dynamics have shifted and remain quite popular with investors. Given the sector still haslower liquidity and trading volume, it gets influenced by inflows and outflows to its ETF and funds.In our opinion, flows are currently in the sweet spot, not too hot and not too cold. The ranking overthe past month puts the group in Q3 and means we are not at extreme levels.Is higher for longer the death kneel for this sector? Not really. The Jefferies forecast from TomSimons is that rates will hover close to where they stand today, with three fed Funds cuts in '25starting in September. Utilities is more tied to rates in small caps, while the correlation is weak inlarge caps. When the Fed funds rate falls, Utilities tend to trail the rest of the universe, which hasnot been the case in this rate reduction environment.If investors are using this group for yield, the issue is the dividend yield is below both the 10-yearand the 2-year. We think one can find cheaper divided paying stocks elsewhere.The one big impact from tariffs is that US GDP growth is now expected to be below 2%, with theJefferies estimate at 1.3%. When the economy grows less than 2%, small and large deliver belowaverage performance. However, we find it interesting that when GDP is below 2%, Utilities lag theuniverse by an above-average margin.Valuations are stretched, but the trend in '25 earnings growth is holding up: We continue to viewUtilities as expensive in both size segments, with Industrials the only group more expensive basedon our valuation models. The P/E for small is now slightly below average, while it is above averagein large.The '25 earnings growth rate has not been cut nearly as much as it has for the overall universe.Utilities earnings growth for 2025 stands at 3.3% in small and 7.2% in large.FTSE Russell rebalancing lends a few interest items: It is FTSE Russell rebalancing season, whenwe see many changes across benchmarks with stocks going from Growth to Value and vice versa.The good news is that the changes to Utilities are minor across the indexes, we highlight several