High Speed Rail Investment - Siemens AG

Since the introduction of The Interstate Highway System 50 years ago championed by President Dwight Eisenhower who gained an appreciation of the German Autobann network, there has yet been a project with such scale and vision.  However the year 2010 could mark the history book again with yet another project with similar size - the high speed rail project.  Similar to the German Autobann, the high speed rail technology is used widely outside of US in places such as Europe and Japan.  However it is the recent nation-wide deployment of high speed rail system in China that has finally got the government seriously thinking of implementing such technology within continental US to avoid been falling behind at the high speed rail race.  Finally in January of 2010, President Barack Obama announced 13 high-speed projects worth $8 billion that span across 22 states including California, Washington, Oregon of the West Coast, Florida, Maine to New York to North Carolina of the East Coast, Texas in the South and 8 states in the Midwest including Illinois and Michigan.  


So with such hype and potential, it would be worth looking at the high speed rail related stocks.  Unfortunately as mentioned above, high speed rail technology wasn't popular here so the first company related is actually a German engineering company called Siemens AG(NYSE:SI).  The Munich, Germany based Siemens AG, is the largest manufacturer of high-speed trains in the world.  Countries that run the Siemens made high speed train include Spain with 26 trains, Russia with 8 trains and 54 more to come, Germany with 15 trains and China with 60 trains and 100 more on order.  The company is aggressively pushing its Valero high-speed train technology to be adopted across the U.S. rail network.


The stock itself is a huge one with $103.51 billion in market cap.  Despite the size it still provides a generous 3.12% dividend and is currently trading at P/E of 20.33.  The technical chart seems to be pointing to more upside with stock trading above 50 day moving average.