While individuals don’t have to worry about month or quarter end performance, it can be interesting to see which sectors or individual stocks have been performing exceptionally well or particularly poorly. It is even more interesting to us here when spinoff related names reside within those ‘best’ or ‘worst’ lists such as this past Q2 when spinoff related names held the #1, 5 and 6 positions on the top performer list. Not bad! Here is the list of the top ten gainers in Q2 taken from Investorplace:
Top 10 Winners in Q2
| Company | Ticker | Q2 % Gain |
| Expedia | EXPE | 44.04% |
| Edwards Lifesciences | EW | 42.03% |
| Dean Foods | DF | 40.63% |
| Cabot Oil & Gas | COG | 26.47% |
| TripAdvisor | TRIP | 25.29% |
| Sunoco | SUN | 25.03% |
| Sherwin-Williams | SHW | 22.19% |
| D.R. Horton | DHI | 21.43% |
| PulteGroup | PHM | 20.90% |
| Hershey | HSY | 18.11% |
Expedia (#1) spun off TripAdvisor (#5) last December and aside from a few blips both names have been knocking it out of the park. Sunoco (#6) spun off its remaining stake in its coke operations SunCoke Energy (SXC) this past January. Sunoco is on this list because it is in the midst of being acquired by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) which paid a nice premium for the company, although it has also made news recently by successfully selling off its refineries, including one to Carlyle. Perhaps this is one of the situations where a spinoff actually did make the company a more attractive acquisition target.
Interestingly, one of the quarter’s worst performers was Genworth Financial (GNW) which was down ~32% during the period. Guest contributor Olmsted recently wrote about the situation at Genworth here. I don’t know what management is thinking there…clearly a spinoff is just what GNW needs to switch lists!
It has been an exciting quarter for the spinoff world and I am looking forward to what Q3 will bring. Any predictions?
Disclosure: Unfortunately, author holds no position in any stock mentioned.
