I have owned a few shares of SWK for longer than I care to admit, and would not recommend them to my worst enemy, they have massively underperformed the market. For comparison’s sake, between 1/1/1985 and 10/1/2025, SWK shares have returned 667.8% vs. S&P500 3,640.5%. But that is 40 years, it gets even worse on shorter time frame: over the last 5 years, SWK -55.0% vs. S&P500 +100.7%, and no amount of dividend will make up for such dismal performance due to mainly two reasons:
1. Direct competition from Chinese manufacturers, which will always underprice everyone else. The list of examples is endless but just four: small household appliances, PCs, sneakers and cellphones.
2. Mediocre management mostly interested in their own compensation and perks. The much heralded merger between Stanley and Black & Decker that created this company was only possible by massively compensating/bribing Nolan Archibald (Black&Decker chairman and CEO) after its business had imploded when its end markets collapsed (construction, DIY and automotive) in 2008.
Anyone bothering to write up such a fawning piece about any business w/o considering its performance has zero credibility.
It should be noted that Black and Decker came together through a similar merger. So this merger was a repeat of an earlier merger plan.
I have owned a few shares of SWK for longer than I care to admit, and would not recommend them to my worst enemy, they have massively underperformed the market. For comparison’s sake, between 1/1/1985 and 10/1/2025, SWK shares have returned 667.8% vs. S&P500 3,640.5%. But that is 40 years, it gets even worse on shorter time frame: over the last 5 years, SWK -55.0% vs. S&P500 +100.7%, and no amount of dividend will make up for such dismal performance due to mainly two reasons:
1. Direct competition from Chinese manufacturers, which will always underprice everyone else. The list of examples is endless but just four: small household appliances, PCs, sneakers and cellphones.
2. Mediocre management mostly interested in their own compensation and perks. The much heralded merger between Stanley and Black & Decker that created this company was only possible by massively compensating/bribing Nolan Archibald (Black&Decker chairman and CEO) after its business had imploded when its end markets collapsed (construction, DIY and automotive) in 2008.
Anyone bothering to write up such a fawning piece about any business w/o considering its performance has zero credibility.