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![TMCNet: Taking stock of Minnesota's stocks: The year's top gainers are still largely playing catch-up to better times. [Star Tribune, Minneapolis]](http://images.tmcnet.com/siteart/invisible.gif)
Taking stock of Minnesota's stocks: The year's top gainers are still largely playing catch-up to better times. [Star Tribune, Minneapolis]
(Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 25--Minnesota investors got their holiday wish for the first time since 2006: appreciating year-end stock portfolios. Of course, that's because the markets had fallen so far in the fall of 2008 as the economy crumbled. Still, the Standard and Poor's 500 index is up 25 percent so far this year, even if it is still off its 2007 high by more than 25 percent. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg-Star Tribune index of Minnesota's 100-largest public companies is up 27 percent through Wednesday. Only 16 of the Minnesota firms have gone down in value, including Surmodics, U.S. Bancorp, Supervalu, Nash Finch and Lakes Entertainment, the Indian casino manager that is off by nearly half this year. The big gainers among Minnesota companies, in most cases, are still selling way off their five-year highs. But it's nice to have stock values rising in anticipation of a northward-heading economy.
The winners this year include:
Select Comfort, up 2,500 percent year-to-date to $6.50 per share.
CEO Bill McLaughlin barely escaped his death bed in 2009 amid a board-and-investor scrap in August that ended up with a tiny majority of shareholders voting down a plan for a new majority owner. McLaughlin had supported the plan, even though the would-be owners had a new CEO in the wings, but ended up keeping his job.
Since then, the stock of the sleep-number mattress company has increased from 75 cents to $6.50 per share. The stock traded as low as 25 cents last winter at an outfit that was valued by investors at nearly $20 per share only three years ago.
McLaughlin, architect of an employee-shedding, 2008-09 restructuring plan, has admitted he underestimated the severity of the recent recession and customers' unwillingness to pay up to several thousand bucks for a high-tech mattress when they're lying awake worrying about their jobs.
Select this month raised $16.4 million in critical capital through a public offering at $4.75 per share.
McLaughlin, who declined a salary during a very rough 2008 for Select employees and investors, is back on the payroll and the company is back in the black.
ValueVision Media, up 1,345 percent to $4.77.
The new CEO of the parent of ShopNBC, Keith Stewart, seems to have steered the TV merchandise peddler around a corner after several years of turnover at the top and bad news at the bottom line. We had shareholder unrest, layoffs and a general sense of disorder, starting with the board. Stewart, clad in a Yankees cap and jersey at a vendor conference last spring, declared a whole new ballgame. And the Eden Prairie-based team is starting to put up some better numbers.
Value Vision will need to get back to $12 per share, its five-year high, to put long-term shareholders back in the money.
FSI International, up 545 percent to $2 per share.
Chaska-based FSI, which designs, manufactures, markets and supports equipment used in the fabrication of semiconductor devices and other microelectronics, is starting to narrow quarterly losses amid a slow turning in the technology sector. The company was trading around $6 per share before business tanked in 2007.
Caribou Coffee, up 485 percent to $8 per share.
CEO Michael Tattersfield, who joined the company in August 2008, recently achieved something that eluded his predecessor for several years: a quarterly profit.
Caribou is betting it will sell more coffee and treats to more workers and shoppers in a better economy. There's already some inkling of that.
But the stock still sells several bucks off its 2005 IPO price, making Caribou a turkey for early investors.
Navarre Corp., up 425 percent to $2.10 per share.
This is a nice annual return. But the stock has descended from $17.60 per share five years ago, a time marked by insider selling and hype over an acquisition that has yet to be the bonanza billed by management. Navarre, dogged by executive credibility issues, has been a show-me stock ever since. The company publishes and distributes video games in the United States and Canada.
Plato Learning, up 241 percent to $4.09 per share.
Vin Riera, the CEO of the educational-software firm, said earlier this year that fiscal 2009 was a watershed in the company's four-year transition to a software-as-a-service business model "with a goal of transforming our business to deliver consistent profitability and strong cash flows to our shareholders."
There's evidence of a turnaround with traction. And Plato is building a promising book of repeat and new business.
Still, despite federal stimulus dollars, school districts don't have tons of money to throw around, and the stock is half its price of a few years ago.
Insignia Systems, up 395 percent to $4.86 per share.
The stock is back to five-year highs, thanks to a return to profitability and brighter prospects for the in-store signage and promotions company.
Moreover, long-time CEO Scott Drill, a guy who doesn't like getting pushed around by bullies, has won several key court decisions against Goliath-sized archrival News America Marketing, part of Rupert Murdoch's huge media empire. These were antitrust and unfair-competition claims.
Net income for the first nine months of 2009 was $2.4 million, compared with a loss last year. Management has indicated a good year ahead.
Health Fitness, up 215 percent to $6.87 per share.
CEO Gregg Lehman appears to have put the finishing touches on a several-year turnaround-and-acquisition program that has positioned the company to take advantage of employer investments in health-and-fitness programs to try to keep their workforces healthy and slow soaring medical-care costs.
"Our future revenue growth will continue to be driven by our ability to help self-insured employers reduce the cost of employee health care," Lehman said this fall in announcing a profitable quarter of growing revenue. "We are currently completing several new ROI analyses that initially show returns ranging from $2.25 to $3.62 for every $1 invested [in employee-wellness programs]."
In short, a pound of prevention costs a lot less than waiting for high-tech cures for diabetes or heart disease.
MoneyGram International, up 190 percent to $2.96.
This, too, isn't much comfort for long-term investors. The stock of the money-transfer outfit was over $20 per share in 2007 before the former CEO was tossed in 2008, along with a multi-million dollar severance package. He'd put company cash in what proved to be a portfolio of crummy mortgages.
Neal St. Anthony --612-673-7144
To see more of the Star Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.startribune.com/.
Copyright (c) 2009, Star Tribune, Minneapolis
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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