Time to get back into GEO, the "lock 'em up" enabling company:
🚢 You’re reading it correctly: GEO at ~14x forward earnings is basically a leveraged bet that the American carceral state will keep expanding—and this administration is doing everything it can to make that true.[intellectia]
Business / valuation reality
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- GEO is a pure play on cages and control: private prisons, ICE detention, and now electronic monitoring and “skip tracing” via its BI subsidiary under a fresh $121M ICE contract to hunt down immigrants on the non‑detained docket.[themarshallproject]
- Policy tailwind: Trump reversed Biden’s phase‑out of private prisons on day one of term two, ICE is targeting access to 100,000+ detention beds, and GEO says it expects to more than double ICE beds vs. late Biden and reactivate all idle facilities.[brennancenter]
- Money is already showing up: private prison revenues and margins have surged under Trump 2.0, with record growth across GEO/CoreCivic in 2025 as new contracts and reopenings hit.[opensecrets]
Valuation‑wise, you’re in the ballpark: depending on which flavor of EPS you use, forward P/E is around 14x, P/S ~0.8x, P/B ~1.4x—modest multiples for a company with double‑digit revenue growth and a policy tailwind, which is why several ratings shops say it’s well‑positioned in its “industry.”[seekingalpha]
Why it “works” as a channel/income name
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- Contracted revenue: multi‑year federal and state contracts (ICE, USMS, BOP, state DOCs) create a fairly predictable base of cash flow, with Trump policy aiming to fill empty beds and expand services like ankle monitors and tracking.[prospect]
- Political leverage: GEO and execs have poured millions into Trump and GOP PACs; they lobbied hard on DHS/ICE appropriations and got rewarded with new beds, new tracking contracts, and reversal of Biden’s phase‑out.[prospect]
- For options traders: relatively stable, contract‑backed cash flow + political backing tends to support a tradable range, which is exactly what you want if you’re selling puts and covered calls for income rather than swinging for big upside.
