Investors should be wary of the impacts several companies may bear from the cost-cutting goals of President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, according to TD Cowen. “The announcement of DOGE has led to concerns about future revenue and profitability of USG [United States government] contractors,” analyst Roman Schweizer said in a Friday note to clients. “It is too early to estimate potential negative impacts to USG contractors given the limited results of prior USG reforms, but cuts are possible and there will be uncertainty for several months.” Adding to the uncertainty behind DOGE’s ambitions was Elon Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Wednesday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that detailed the DOGE co-leaders’ ambitions for the program, which TD Cowen said falls into three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. Among several claims, Musk, CEO of Tesla and a close aid of Trump, and Ramaswamy wrote that DOGE will “help end federal overspending” by targeting the more than $500 billion in annual federal expenditures that the duo said are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended. In an effort to find companies that have the most at stake under potential DOGE actions, TD Cowen identified the publicly traded government contractors with the highest amount of dollars obligated in fiscal year 2023, both overall and by individual federal department. Take a look at the names below: The top defense contractors for the U.S. government — including Northrop Grumman , Lockheed Martin , General Dynamics , RTX and Boeing — are among the major beneficiaries of fiscal spending in departments such as NASA, the Department of Defense and Department of State. Defense, aviation and IT company Leidos Holdings is another company that receives huge amounts of funding in departments such as housing and urban, homeland security, transportation and justice, the firm found. Shares of these defense companies have been slammed over the past month, partly due to concerns that defense stocks are hovering near extremely high valuations and a federal cost-cutting effort could add another blow to the group, given that the DoD receives a large portion of total U.S. government spending. Pharmaceutical giants such as Merck , Humana and Pfizer could also be impacted by potential DOGE cuts, as the firm found they receive large sums of money primarily through contracts with the Department of Health & Human Services. To be sure, Schweizer said the consequences for these companies may also be less than anticipated given that Congress plays a role in regulation and reducing government employee headcount could lead to more outsourcing, among other factors.
