Billionaire Gabelli Says Sony Corp (SNE) Should Split, Calls Herc Holdings Inc (HRI) “A Triple”, Talks Favorite Defensive Stocks

Mario Gabelli, the billionaire chairman and CEO of Gamco Investors, recently talked about some of his holdings such as Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE) in a recent interview on CNBC. Gabelli founded his investment firm in 1977 and is one of the top paid executives on Wall Street. He uses a value investing approach to fund management and is one of the main proponents of the Graham and Dodd School of security analysis.

We’ll take a look at his comments on five stocks in this article.

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Gabelli said that Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE) is one of his holdings and he is quite positive about its future. The company is in the midst of a turnaround with a new CEO and CFO. He likes Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE), which is currently trading at ~$32, with a market capitalization of ~$39 billion. The Japanese conglomerate is engaged in a number of businesses ranging from mobiles, gaming, movie making, financial services, and electronics. Gabelli mentioned that if the financial services business were to be sold or spun-off, which he thinks it should do, the company would have no debt.

Sony is strong both in content and distribution and its electronics business is seeing good traction and making good progress in areas such as AI, sensors and robots. He is also positive about its entertainment business and its PlayStation segment. Gabelli also thinks that Sony has upside potential as it pushes its movie distribution business into China and Japan. He thinks that the U.S has a strong competitive advantage in the movie business and that China has been putting up trade barriers against Hollywood. While the number of hedge funds in our records holding Sony decreased to 14 from 18 in the second quarter, the value of their holdings appreciated by $2 million during that time to $281 million.

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Gabelli is also quite positive on defensive stocks. He thinks that the U.S has underspent on defense and that global hotspots such as Crimea, the South China Sea, Iraq, and Iran will lead to increased defense spending by the U.S and its allies. While he thinks that Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) is a good company, he is even more positive on stocks such as Harris Corp (NYSE:HRS). The company, whose shares are trading at around $90, recently got a contract from the U.A Airforce to perform sustainment work on the electronic warfare systems on its B-52 and C-130 aircraft. 21 hedge funds that we track held shares of Harris Corp (NYSE:HRS) worth $576 million on June 30.

We’l check out Mario Gabelli’s comments on several other stocks on the next page.