{"id":170,"date":"2012-05-07T15:12:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T19:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom.chainstoreguide.com\/2012\/05\/which-has-been-the-countrys-best-performing-stock-over-the-past-twenty-five-years-its-not-apple\/"},"modified":"2012-05-07T15:12:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T19:12:00","slug":"which-has-been-the-countrys-best-performing-stock-over-the-past-twenty-five-years-its-not-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/2012\/05\/which-has-been-the-countrys-best-performing-stock-over-the-past-twenty-five-years-its-not-apple\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Has Been the Country\u2019s Best-Performing Stock Over the Past Twenty Five Years? It\u2019s not Apple\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

In fact the company in question is decidedly low-tech.<\/strong>\u00a0 It also resides in the industry hit most hard as a result of the subprime scandal and further devastated by ravages of the recession.<\/p>\n

Since the infamous \u2018Black Monday\u2019 of October 1987, this company’s share price is up 38,565 percent. Microsoft, by contrast, is up less than 10,000 percent over that same period (otherwise most impressive).\u00a0 Apple shares have gone up by a mere 5,500 percent, though to be fair even in the early 1990\u2019s Apple was struggling for literal survival.<\/p>\n

With all of the stock market\u2019s controversies through the years, its glamour and glitter, the company whose stock has registered the greatest percentage of growth represents products that couldn\u2019t be more basic. \u00a0They likely appear on relatively few Christmas lists.<\/p>\n

The company is Fastenal.\u00a0 While not a household name to the general public, Fastenal is revered by those who work or closely follow the world of Wall Street as well as its legion of happy customers and frustrated competitors.\u00a0 Unlike many hot, speculative issues which rapidly burn out as stock market disasters, Fastenal has backed aggressive expansion plans with bold investments in personnel (especially in terms of its sales force), new locations and technologies meant to make its products ever more available for its generally professional customers.<\/p>\n

Essentially Fastenal has accurately analyzed the needs of its customers and determined how to best serve them through innovation and investment.\u00a0 The company\u2019s website represents an online catalogue that supports 10,700 pages.\u00a0 A visit to the website begins with an offering of fasteners (no surprise) above quick groupings of many basics including such diverse product lines as Tools & Equipment, Chemicals & Paints, Plumbing, Safety, Packaging, Cutting Tools, Electrical, Janitorial, Welding, Hydraulics, Fleet & Automotive and on and on.<\/p>\n

There is even an imposing section titled Fastenal Racing, fully documenting Fastenal\u2019s NASCAR racing team led by driver Carl Edwards.\u00a0 As seems typical of Fastenal, there is a link to NASCAR\u2019s website offering seemingly almost as many official Fastenal Racing products as Fastenal offers its professional customers.<\/p>\n

In the company\u2019s desire to make its great breadth and depth of product more directly available to customers, the company has invested in what it terms Automated Fastenal Stores.<\/em>\u00a0 These are basically vending machines which offer essentials such a fasteners.\u00a0 They can be placed at job sites or near customer locations for the timely convenience of the company\u2019s clientele.\u00a0 Though a considerable investment, the company currently operates nearly 7,500 of these customer favored devices.<\/p>\n

Chain Store Guide\u2019s database of Home Center Operators & Hardware Chains indicates that Fastenal began the new century with barely over 800 locations.\u00a0 By the time the subprime mess began to affect the market Fastenal was approaching 2,000 locations.\u00a0 Two years later as the recession was coming into its own and most companies in this industry were cutting expansion projections, the company was nearing 2,200 venues.\u00a0 By the end of 2011 the company was operating through 2,585 locations.\u00a0 This grew to 2,611 at the end of its recently completed first quarter.\u00a0 Hard economic times for the nation, and especially for this industry, seem to have been circumvented by Fastenal\u2019s focused and aggressive management style.\u00a0 Their motto could easily be, \u2018You\u2019ve got to invest money to make money\u2019.<\/p>\n

During this period, CSG\u2019s database of Home Center Operators & Hardware Chains shows a brilliant financial picture in keeping with the showing of Fastenal\u2019s Wall Street performance.\u00a0 The company came into the new millenniumwith annual sales of just over $600 million.\u00a0 For fiscal 2011, the company recently announced an annual sales figure of $2.77 billion, well more than quadrupling sales in just over an economically challenging decade.\u00a0 This is a fitting example in which a company\u2019s financial performance is correctly mirrored by its stock\u2019s performance on Wall Street.<\/p>\n

In speaking to analysts across all industries, we seem to agree that one can generally tell a lot about a company\u2019s success by the detail and clarity of its annual and especially its quarterly financial releases.\u00a0 Even Fastenal\u2019s financials press releases are a paradise for those who can\u2019t get enough when it comes to statistics.\u00a0 In addition to historical quarterly comparisons of store counts and sales we can easily compare store personnel counts and the company\u2019s growth of its heralded vending machine business, which is clearly a hit with customers and a key to the company\u2019s financial growth, a major difference maker against competitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In fact the company in question is decidedly low-tech.\u00a0 It also resides in the industry hit most hard as a result of the subprime scandal and further devastated by ravages of the recession. Since the infamous \u2018Black Monday\u2019 of October 1987, this company’s share price is up 38,565 percent. Microsoft, by contrast, is up less… Continue reading Which Has Been the Country\u2019s Best-Performing Stock Over the Past Twenty Five Years? It\u2019s not Apple\u2026<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-hardware","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}