We recently published a list of 10 Stocks in Wall Street’s Watchlist. In this article, we are going to take a look at where United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) stands against other stocks in Wall Street’s watchlist.
Dan Niles, Niles Investment Management founder, in a latest program on CNBC reiterated his concerns about a slowdown in AI spending and said that major technology companies were already facing the impact of a downbeat trend in the industry before the tariff wars started:
“When the MAG 7 reported the December quarter or calendar Q4, six of the seven had their March revenue estimates already cut. So think about that for a second. But the thing is, when the Fed’s cutting like it was last year, nobody cares, right? If the stocks are going up, the charts look good. Why worry about fundamentals or valuations?,” Niles said. “Because the stocks are going higher. So looking forward, I expect all the estimates to come down yet again for the June quarter. When these companies report the March quarter, they were already having troubles when they reported the December quarter before all this tariff stuff kicked in.”
Niles said that companies were buying more ahead of the China tariffs because they expected that duties were coming from the US.
“You can just see that from the China export data already, where for China as a whole, in the month of March, exports were up 12.4%. People were expecting 4.6%. So that’s a massive beat there. And so you can already tell demand’s being pulled forward. So my thought was there was a payback period coming anyway.”
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For this article, we picked 10 stocks Wall Street analysts have been talking about lately. With each stock, we have mentioned its hedge fund sentiment. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A bird’s eye view of a large commercial jetliner taking off from an airport runway.
United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 54
Joseph M. Terranova, Senior Managing Director for Virtus Investment Partners, said in a latest program on CNBC that United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) is one of the airline stocks that “don’t look good” amid industry headwinds. Terranova’s fund owns a stake in the company:
“I’m going to be transparent—there’s a quarterly rebalance coming up, and these stocks could be removed. I agree with every one of these price cuts because I think the positive momentum in the airlines has been lost. It was good while it lasted, and we benefited from it. Now, in terms of fundamentals, there’s a clear challenge to revenue growth. You’re seeing lower fares and the potential for a fare war, while demand is starting to wane. I wanted a publicly traded fund so people could see my performance, and if I’m doing that, I have to be honest about what I see ahead. I’ll call it like it is—yes, we own it and can’t do much about it right now, but these stocks don’t look good.”
Patient Capital Management stated the following regarding United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) had a strong fourth quarter, gaining 70.2% in the period. The company benefitted from continued strong demand that surprised the market as well as the initiation of a buyback program, the first since COVID. There continues to be strong travel demand from both retail and business travelers. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global air passenger travel is still below the pre-COVID implied trend path despite reaching a new all-time high this year. United’s focus on the customer over the last few years has led to strong improvement in net promoter scores (NPS) which should continue to flow through the model via better TRASM (total revenue per available seat mile) and higher cash flows and earnings. As of today, United alone accounts for ~30% of the overall industry’s profits. We expect this market share to grow and be defensible as we transition to an environment where customer service becomes the differentiating factor, and scale provides unparalleled ability to reinvest in the customer experience.”
Overall, UAL ranks 9th on our list of stocks in Wall Street’s watchlist. While we acknowledge the potential of UAL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than UAL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
