The Summary of Commentary on Economic Conditions, commonly known as the “Beige Book,” is published by the Federal Reserve eight times per year. In it, the 12 regional Reserve branches offer anecdotal evidence on the current economic environment in their respective regions based on interviews with key business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources. In Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.(NYSE:GS)’s quarterly Beige Book publication, they review the earnings transcripts of companies in the S&P 500 to monitor the anecdotal evidence of fundamental and thematic trends. This quarter’s report contains excerpts from 80 companies that account for 36% of total S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) revenues and comprise 41% of the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) equity capitalization. All management comments on the following pages were taken verbatim from company transcripts as recorded by Call Street and accessed via FactSet. All company data are as of February 12, 2013. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) highlight four major themes from 4Q 2012 earnings commentary.
Theme 1: Strategies to protect high margins
Companies are focused on protecting margins at the expense of revenue growth. Firms plan to control costs, improve product mix, and grow high margin segments.
Theme 2: Variety in the uses of cash
Managements have been using free cash flow and high cash balances in a variety of ways. Most noticeably, firms have funded pension plans; increased advertising and technology infrastructure spending; and distributed cash to shareholders.
Theme 3: Mixed views on the economy
Some companies noted signs of a recovering economy while others commented on persisting challenges and weak confidence. While the economy heals uncertainty lingers, leaving many firms to “wait-and-see” before making decisions.
Theme 4: Impact of political uncertainty, particularly with taxes
Politics remain a significant hurdle for companies. Elections and government transitions, in the US and abroad, combined with the fiscal cliff, payroll tax rise, and potential corporate tax reform caused uncertainty for a wide variety of companies.
Theme 1: Strategies to protect high margins
Companies are focused on ways to protect profitability as margins have fallen modestly from historically high levels. Some companies are prioritizing margins over revenue growth while others are increasing growth in high margin segments and paying special attention to controlling costs as well as product mix.
Selected examples: Aetna Inc. (NYSE:AET), Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ:BBBY), ConAgra Foods, Inc. (NYSE:CAG), General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY), The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL), Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB), Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ), SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Walgreen Company (NYSE:WAG), and Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM).
Theme 2: Varied uses of cash
Companies discussed the variety of ways they are deploying strong balance sheets and large cash balances. Managements are increasing spending in capex, keeping cash overseas, building infrastructure, being opportunistic about M&A, borrowing at low yields, and funding pension plans. There was little evidence of increased hiring.
Selected examples: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX), BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP), Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL), Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON), Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc (NYSE:HOT), The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY), International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT), LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB), 3M Co (NYSE:MMM), The Southern Company (NYSE:SO), Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN), and Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM).
Theme 3: Mixed views on the economy
Uncertainty persists, and companies continue to tread lightly in a slowly recovering economy. By and large, corporate management remains cautious due to slow GDP growth, low consumer confidence, and a mixed holiday season. However, these challenges are well understood by now and recent stability alongside a steady recovery in housing is generating some optimism.
Selected examples: Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD), American Express Company (NYSE:AXP), BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS), E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD), Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO), General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV), 3M Co (NYSE:MMM), Robert Half International Inc. (NYSE:RHI), Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB), The Southern Company (NYSE:SO), SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), and Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC).
Theme 4: Impact of political uncertainty, particularly with taxes
Politics both in the U.S. and internationally increased uncertainty. In the U.S., the election, a temporary resolution to the fiscal cliff, and increased payroll taxes left managements frustrated. In addition, concerns about the debt ceiling, sequestration, corporate tax reform and health care legislation are still hotly debated. Companies are cautiously optimistic about the leadership transition underway in China.
Selected examples: Alcoa Inc. (NYSE:AA), BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX), Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON), Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc (NYSE:HOT), The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), The Southern Company (NYSE:SO), Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN), and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ).
Theme 1: Strategizing for improved margins
Companies are focused on ways to protect profitability as margins have fallen modestly from historically high levels. Some companies are prioritizing margins over revenue growth while others are increasing growth in high margin segments and paying special attention to controlling costs as well as product mix.
Aetna Inc. (NYSE:AET)
…We believe we can continue to generate revenue and profit growth in 2013 in this business as we price to medical cost trend and manage to our target margin. We remain committed to our disciplined pricing model, and when faced with a choice, we will continue to favor achieving target margins over membership growth.
ConAgra Foods, Inc. (NYSE:CAG)
We have been very disciplined with our pricing architecture, and in some cases, we’ve deliberately chosen to improve profit margin instead of growing volume.
General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)
We have every one of our teams working on lowering their structure, so having a more consolidated higher level P&Ls. We have everybody participating and putting their back offices into centers of excellence and more shared services across the company. And we have a common IT initiative across the company to reduce our general ledger and enterprise resource planning systems that is pretty much across the portfolio. So everybody is participating, everybody has cost targets and it’s pretty broadly based.
SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY)
The relative improvement you’re seeing on the margin trends is a combination of two things…trying to strike the right balance in terms of growth and being responsive to our customers and secondly is because the inflation has subsided…. So we’re continuing to try to grow the business aggressively but be smart about it, and we need to continue to improve on the margin side.
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD)
I’ll also say that we’re focused on additional cost reductions beyond simply people reductions [in Europe]. We’ve got a lot of initiatives going on from a supply chain perspective as well as trying to push price.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
We believe that there are two primary factors that will benefit gross margins sequentially. First and the largest of the two, our teams have made meaningful progress in reductions in product and transitory costs from the actions that they have been working on to get down the cost curve. … And second, we expect a more typical level of deferred revenue from
device sales.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)
We’ve been operating so much under the basis that there won’t be increased revenues. Obviously, the world is going to evolve so at some point that’s not true. But, our approach has been what can we control, how do we drive up margins in a flat revenue environment, and obviously through the expense line is how we’re doing that.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)
As you know, the investments we’ve made to drive record smartphones sales impacted margins. While we continue to make progress in improving our margins, we also are more than willing to invest in smartphones because of the benefits they bring. We’re doing a lot of work in terms of just margin expansion… expect to expand our margins again this year, and so our objective is to get our margins comparable to our competitors and also equalize share.
Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ)
And I would just point out that the pricing that we took was sort of significantly below just the general level of pricing that’s been taken in the beer industry. So our pricing was below 2% overall, whereas the industry as a general proposition has taken more pricing than that. So that could be the reason why we’re really not seeing any slowdown or impact of our pricing thus far, because it was a pretty modest increase.
The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY)
…We’ve seen moderation in some of our key commodities is also expected to really benefit it next year. So that does play an important part.
NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE)
Although there continues to be a great deal of volatility in the components of gross margin, we are seeing some encouraging trends. The pricing actions we’ve taken over the last five seasons, combined with easing raw material costs, are now more than offsetting the impact of ongoing labor cost inflation.
Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL)
Selling systems loaded with Oracle intellectual property along with deemphasizing the selling of low-margin, undifferentiated products like commodity x86 servers and LSI disk storage systems, products that contain no Oracle intellectual property, those two things have reshaped and downsized our hardware business while making that business much more profitable.
Walgreen Company (NYSE:WAG)
We achieved stable margins in a very promotional environment. We’ll continue to work to strike the right optimal balance between sales and profitable growth. …The key to retail is trying to balance price and promotion in the right way…
Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ:BBBY)
These decreases in the gross profit margin as a percentage of net sales were primarily attributed to an increase in coupons, due to increases in both the redemptions, and the average coupon amount as well as a shift in the mix of merchandise sold to lower margin categories.
Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM)
The biggest driver of margin pressure is the same-store transaction decline. That weighed heavily on us in the fourth quarter and we see that continuing into 2013.
Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB)
All the customers in North America that I’m talking to are still looking for us to help them drive more cost out of the system, whether that is efficiency or technology…
The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO)
…We anticipate a more moderate year of commodity inflation with incremental costs related to our big four commodities.
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Theme 2: Varied uses of cash
Companies discussed the variety of ways they are deploying strong balance sheets and large cash balances. Managements are increasing spending in capex, keeping cash overseas, building infrastructure, being opportunistic about M&A, borrowing at low yields, and funding pension plans. There was little evidence of increased hiring.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc (NYSE:HOT)
Our approach to capital and return going forward remains the same; using dividends and share buybacks to return cash to shareholders.
Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL)
…We have taken advantage of a low interest rate environment here in the U.S. to structure debt at very low coupon levels… located some of our cash in overseas markets where we see deployment opportunities and with that cash there, the investment returns we are getting are quite elevated.
Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ)
…We anticipate no change in how we’ve been marketing the brands and – or really the levels of investment behind our marketing.
Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST)
The big culprit there is something I’ve mentioned in the past few quarters that just continued to increase is the IT modernization costs. We are now in full swing and that represented y-over-y a 7 basis point hit to SG&A. When I look at IT costs as a percent of sales y-over-y, they were up seven basis points.
The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY)
Advertising spending increased 27% in Q4, slightly greater than our expectation of a 20% increase, as we took advantage of media buying opportunities to support our core brands. A greater percentage of that capital [spending] is non-U.S. in 2013.
Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN)
It would get back to what we always say about our priorities for excess cash and that’s to invest in growth through CapEx and acquisitions…which is what we’re looking for, and asking [our business leaders] to relook at some projects and see if some of those might need to be accelerated.
Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM)
Uses included additions to plant, property and equipment or PP&E of $10.1B and shareholder distributions of $7.6B. Additional financing and investing activities increased our cash by $300mm.
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)
We are investing a lot of money in technology. We’re actually investing a lot of money right now in terms of making sure we’re compliant with all the regulatory issues, which I think is going to be a burden…
Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP)
Although we have significant cash balances of $1B at quarter end, we have highly productive uses for the cash over the next couple of years. We also have $600mm of debt that comes due in 2013… Given our funding requirements, we anticipate that we’ll tap the capital markets sometime in the first half of the year.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM)
So we still think if you haircut earnings and buy stock at these prices, it’s probably still a good deal.
Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX)
Well, I would say as it relates to pension, we’ve done a lot in the last 5 or 6 years to try to mitigate risk. We’ve closed the U.S. plant, the new entrants… We’ve lowered our expected return on assets. We’ve changed the investment asset allocation mix to be 40% fixed income. We’ve bought treasuries of the hedge in the pension fund since 2008.
3M Co (NYSE:MMM)
We’ve had certainly record levels of capital investment here in 2012. And as we’ve told you, we expect our CapEx to rise in 2013.
Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON)
…Pension is expected to generate income of $50 million to $75 million this year, and that reflects the proactive funding we’ve done to date coupled with a higher than expected return on assets last year. If you just go back to the numbers in terms of discount rate that we had in 2009, 2010 in the 5% to 5.25% range, you’re basically at a fully funded status.
Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)
We actually sent out in the fourth quarter an offering to our terminated but vested participants in the plan, offering to essentially give them lump sum payments in lieu of the pension payments over periods of time when they retire. We got a fairly good return on that…
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
We’re buying equipment that we will own that we will put in partners’ facilities. Our primary motivation there is for supply, but we get other benefits as well. We’re also adding to our data center capabilities to support all of the services…
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)
…We believe now is the time to invest and that’s why we’re doing it with confidence, discipline but confidence.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM)
…We spent $3.7 billion to acquire 11 companies…Over the last three years, we’ve spent $11.5 billion for acquisitions.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)
And if you combine the buybacks and dividends, we returned $23B to our owners last year. And we did this with a very small increase in debt.
The Southern Company (NYSE:SO)
We put $445 million into our pension this year at the end of 2012. Our PBO funding ratio was at 90% for the pension liability and it’s 84% when you throw in the non-qualified liabilities.
LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB)
On the capital side we under spent our capital budget for 2012 by several hundred million dollars. We’ve done everything we can to make sure that we’re spending the money efficiently.
Theme 3: Mixed views on the economy
Uncertainty persists, and companies continue to tread lightly in a slowly recovering economy. By and large, corporate management remains cautious due to slow GDP growth, low consumer confidence, and a mixed holiday season. However, these challenges are well understood by now and recent stability alongside a steady recovery in housing is generating some optimism.
Parker-Hannifin Corporation (NYSE:PH)
Parker-Hannifin Corporation (NYSE:PH) offered a broad overview of strong, flat, and weak industries
Real strong segments for us right now would be Pharma and Ag, process industries, oil and gas and commercial Aerospace OEM. … Just strong would be defense Aerospace OEM, defense Aerospace aftermarket…
Forestry, general industrial, machine tools, marine, construction, mining, commercial air conditioning, those would be some that would be trending negative. And then kind of flat right now … cars and light trucks, power gen, semicon, life sciences, heavy duty truck, industrial refrigeration and commercial Aerospace aftermarket. That’s kind of the lay of the land right now.
Companies citing economic uncertainty:
SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY)
Consumer sentiment and restaurant traffic trends have softened of late due to ongoing economic pressures…
American Express Company (NYSE:AXP)
So we’ll strive to be a growth company in a slow growth environment. But achieving 8% is challenging with GDP in the U.S. where it is.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO)
With the economic uncertainty that still exists, we have contingency plans in place across our businesses to further reduce cost if necessary.
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)
We have been living in a strained investment environment for some time. Economic and political uncertainty persist. Unfortunately, they will continue to persist.
Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS)
…Our customers have continued to tell us that the economic uncertainty in the U.S. caused them to be very cautious in spending, hiring, and investment decision making. Unknowns concerning U.S. tax policies and the impact of changing healthcare regulations have created a pause in many of their business activities. …I think everybody’s just taking a wait and see attitude to see what happens.
Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C)
Although the overall environment has shown signs of improvement, we believe it’s likely to remain challenging, with continued spread compression, new or evolving regulation, as well as the costs associated with putting legacy issues behind us.
E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD)
The U.S. is experiencing a weak recovery with bright spots and pent-up demand for housing and auto.
Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO)
Near term, the environment remains difficult. Recent consumer confidence commentary and muted holiday sales results confirm to us that our customers remain cautious. We saw this uncertainty reflected in our discretionary sales trends in December.
Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB)
Let us now turn to the macro environment where there continues to be uncertainty. However, GDP growth outlook for 2013 remains in line with the previous quarter…
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ)
This [government policy] uncertainty created a wait-and-see approach that clearly impacted new business in 2012.
General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)
I think about the U.S., you’ve got a slow and steady housing recovery that I think is very positive and then there’s still a lot of fiscal uncertainty. And how those blend through into U.S. GDP in 2013, we’ll see.
Companies noting improvement in economic conditions:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM)
I think the American economy, I would say the table is rather well set. Consumers, businesses, housing and small businesses, they’re all in pretty good shape. And I think we need good policy and good fiscal policy…
The Southern Company (NYSE:SO)
These trends along with continued positive migration into the region bode well for continued residential customer growth in our markets. Finally, our roundtable participants were cautious in their outlook for the commercial sector, but do see growth emerging, particularly in the private sector.
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC)
The housing market began a steady rebound during 2012. While many measures of activity and prices remain low by historical standards and a complete recovery will still take some time, there is no doubt that a corner was turned, which is a real positive …
Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV)
Broadly speaking, while we see a lot of encouraging signs in the broader economy, we’re monitoring demand closely for signs of any weakening by consumers resulting from the increased income taxes, but at this point, we’re not seeing any signs of any weakness.
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE:APD)
Going forward, we expect slow, but modestly improving growth driven in part by the recovering housing market and the Fed monetary policy. In any scenario, reduced government spending will lower 2013 growth.
3M Co (NYSE:MMM)
We can see recovery coming in the base [ex-electronics] business, and that is a big portion for us. And so we see sequential improvement in that as we move ahead for the base business going into Q1.
Robert Half International Inc. (NYSE:RHI)</st rong>
In the U.S., year-over-year growth rates for our temporary and consulting divisions decelerated throughout the quarter. However, we did see sequential growth in every U.S. line of business during the quarter.
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Theme 4: Impact of political uncertainty, particularly with taxes
Politics both in the U.S. and internationally increased uncertainty. In the U.S., the election, a temporary resolution to the fiscal cliff, and increased payroll taxes left managements frustrated. In addition, concerns about the debt ceiling, sequestration, corporate tax reform and health care legislation are still hotly debated. Companies are cautiously optimistic about the leadership transition underway in China.
Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN)
…What we’re seeing coming into the year is that with the payroll tax increase, gasoline prices doing what they’re doing, there are consumers feeling these effects but they’re not eating less meat, they’re eating different meat now.
Alcoa Inc. (NYSE:AA)
However, there’s one uncertainty still there, which is the uncertainty around the U.S. budget and that potentially has an impact obviously on the defense spend.
The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO)
We need to wait and evaluate the impact of the payroll taxes as well as the higher gasoline prices.
FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX)
And finally, I just want to emphasize that the calendar year 2013 outlook could swing either direction depending upon policy outcomes, especially with the fiscal cliff issues in the U.S. and certainly issues in Europe.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc (NYSE:HOT)
In the U.S., uncertainty created by the presidential election followed by the fiscal cliff negotiations also caused businesses to adopt a wait-and-see attitude as we approached the end of the year.
Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON)
…We’re cautiously optimistic, but it’s just too early to tell what direction the economy is going, and we’re all well too familiar with the issue. Big democracies around the world are still in gridlock over debt, and the U.S. is kicking the debt can down the road and finding that kick doesn’t quite go as far as it used to. All of these factors make forecasting what’s going to happen a real challenge.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)
I think the biggest issues that could impact our industry and our company tend to be more macro policies in nature. Tax policy, for example – do we get a big budget deal done? And if we do get a big budget deal done, is there an appetite and an interest in doing tax reform? And we would obviously be very, very significant supporters of tax reform. We would really love to see the effective rate on profits come down, and understanding that that means some of the preferences like bonus depreciation may have to be compromised, but we think that’s a good thing. It’s good for our industry, and we think it’s healthy for the U.S. economy…other policy issues that are kind of an unknown that could affect the industry or us specifically are the Affordable Care Act, as those regulations are published, what kind of impact will that have, because that’s just a big uncertainty that we’re all waiting, trying to understand exactly how that’s going to affect all of us. And so the macro will be probably more important… and more relevant to us in 2013 than industry-specific issues.
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)
…Let’s hope Washington gets its act together and that we could have a sensible solution in terms of our deficits. And if we have that, we could have a very productive year in our markets. That is, in my mind, the biggest drag to our economy. The economy is not dragging by itself, but Washington is dragging our economy by inaction and, importantly, confusion.
Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C)
So I think that what we would like to see now is how the U.S. deals with the ongoing debt ceiling debate and the upcoming sequester on expense reductions. We get through that and we see how the economy performs and we see whether or not those trends that we see now are sustainable, and then we’ve got decisions to make.
Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ)
The whys and wherefores of the slowdown are hard to know for sure. We pretty much think that it’s probably related to all of this fiscal cliff business, which impacted retail in general across all consumer goods. But that’s about the only thing that we can really say with respect to that.
Paychex, Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYX)
…We’ve seen gradual improvement, I think there was some improvement in the first couple of months of this FY and then it seemed to kind of stall again because of the election coming out, and – so, I think the new business formations we’ve talked a lot about, that really hasn’t recovered. I think then just businesses opening up those additional locations, adding employees, has kind of stagnated a little bit. It’s been pretty flat this quarter because of the election and then the fiscal cliff discussion and so forth. So, I would say, it’s not worse, it just hasn’t gotten a lot better.
The Southern Company (NYSE:SO)
The other thing is they could disappear with the hands of Congress at any time, right? We know that we’re in a revenue hungry Congress and how long can Congress afford to hand out preferential treatment to the renewables industry? So, there will be some taxadvantaged investing in the form of solar investments. I get that, but we really like building long-term books of business that we’ve done successfully in the past.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO)
So we’re already taking cost actions because of sequestration. So that is already embedded in our operating plan and our guidance. So that’s happening. It’s more if things get even more muted on the industrial side, would we take the incremental contingency plan. So that’s our base assumption on sequestration.
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ)
If we can get rid of some of the uncertainty around debt ceiling and deficit reduction and especially tax reform, I think this will open up for companies to start invest again.
