(10 points)

Goodyear Tire (NYSE: GT)

Outperform

**

(35 points)

It's a record that plays out, by the way, throughout the length and breadth of Citi's scorecard. With 750 picks recorded over the two years we've been tracking the banker's recommendations, we can say that at this time, Citi's record is mediocre at best. Fewer than half of its recommendations are beating the market, and on average, any given Citi pick is underperforming the S&P 500 by nearly two percentage points.

But does this mean that the banker's going to be wrong on 3M as well, ab initio? I don't believe so.

Buy the numbers
While I'd hesitate to call 3M a "sell" myself, I do see reason to be leery of buying the stock. Citi's macroeconomic concerns aside, I just don't see a lot of value in 3M at today's prices.

You see, the stock's trading for about a P/E of 12 right now. Assuming that on average, the scrum of analysts tracking it are right in their expectations of 11% long-term earnings growth, that price looks approximately fair. What tips the balance toward "overpriced," in my view, is the fact that 3M generates slightly less free cash flow than it reports as "profit" under GAAP. Specifically, it generated $3.56 billion in free cash flow over the past 12 months; but it reported $3.78 billion in net earnings.

This wouldn't bother me so much if 2008 was an aberration, but in fact, 3M has generated less free cash flow than accounting profit for three years running now.

Foolish takeaway
So, to sum up, in 3M we've got an iffy quick valuation, somewhat soggy quality of earnings, and an analyst pointing to macroeconomic storm clouds gathering outside. The fact that the analyst in question isn't doing all that well right now doesn't detract from my general impression that ... 3M might not be all that great of an investment either.