Prices of manufacturer, distributor and contractor stocks were all over the map in 2017. In a year where the major stock indices boasted some of their biggest gains in recent memory, as you will see in the chart on the next page, relatively few of the stocks that Electrical Marketing tracks beat the indices’ gains for the year (Dow Jones Industrial Average +24.3%; S&P 500 +18.4%; and NASDAQ +27.2%). Only 11 electrical manufacturers topped the three indices in terms of year-over-year (YOY) gains. None of the electrical or industrial distributors EM tracks beat all of the indices, although Fastenal and Kaman did top the S&P 500 with their gains of +19.8% and +20.8%. respectively.
There were some big surprises on both the top and bottom of the list. While the decline in GE’s stock price over the past year (down about -40% YOY) made national news, Acuity Brands, which had been a Wall Street darling over the past few years with impressive gains in its share prices, got whacked late in 2017 and ended up the year with a -24% YOY decline.
Mersen SA was way ahead of the pack with a massive +84.4% YOY increase in its stock price. Osram (+57.1%); General Cable (+56.9%); Rockwell Automation (+44.4%); and Cree (+39.6%) also had particularly impressive gains. Prysmian Group is in the process of acquiring General Cable for $30 per share in cash.
The other electrical manufacturers with share gains of more than 30% were 3M, EMCOR, MasTec, Philips, Littelfuse, Flir and ABB. It’s tough to draw any conclusions about which product groups fared best. Although lighting had three firms beating the indices, several companies suffered big double-digit YOY losses — Acuity, LSI and Revolution Lighting.