Friday, July 25, 2014

The Best of the Best: Top Performing Stock of the Past 30 Years

Lately I have been contemplating what makes a company great. What are the building blocks that set a stock up for truly phenomenal long-term performance? Can we, as investors, find a trail of crumbs that lead us to the proverbial “great” company? A simple construct, but a lot of work for my feeble brain.

A lot of people much smarter than myself have tackled this topic, spent lifetimes researching it, and written volumes on the subject. I am not going to break any new ground. Rather, I simply want to share my starting point - a list of the top performing stocks over the last 30, 25, and 20 years (criteria: end date of 12/31/2013, traded on a U.S. exchange, ending market cap greater than $2 billion).

By going through some old Value Line manuals, I've been able to step back in “real” time and see what was happening and how the company was performing before it began its phenomenal run. It has been an enlightening experience (hint:  as Buffett/Greenblatt/(insert other great value investor) has said, ROIC really is important).

Hopefully you too can get some use out of the list. If you have thoughts or ideas on what made these companies great, or want to discuss them in more detail, please feel free to email (email on the right).


Rank
30 Yrs.
Ann. Return
25 Yrs.
Ann. Return
20 Yrs.
Ann. Return
1
Amgen Inc.
25.20%
Brown & Brown
27.10%
Monster Bev
35.40%
2
Danaher Corp.
23.70%
Drew Industries
25.30%
USANA Health
33.80%
3
Kansas City Sthrn
22.70%
Kansas City Sthrn
24.50%
Biogen Idec Inc.
33.80%
4
HollyFrontier Co.
21.70%
UnitedHealth Grp
24.00%
Keurig Gr Mtn
33.60%
5
Paychex Inc.
21.20%
Jack Henry
23.40%
Celgene Corp.
33.00%
6
The Gap Inc.
21.10%
Polaris Industries
22.10%
Gilead Sciences
31.20%
7
Nike Inc.
20.60%
Micros Systems
21.70%
Middleby Corp.
30.20%
8
Altria Group
20.30%
Balchem Crop.
20.50%
Astronics Corp.
28.90%
9
Precision Castparts
20.30%
EMC Corp.
20.20%
Cooper Comp.
28.20%
10
Stryker Corp.
20.20%
Charles Schwab
20.00%
Balchem Corp.
27.30%
Data:  Bloomberg



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1 comment:

Safety in Value said...

Great post, thanks! Interesting to me that there is very little overlap between the lists.