11 ms·

A while back I invested in 3M because it's a company that makes so many amazing and industry leading products and I thought they'd do well. A couple years late

A while back I invested in 3M because it's a company that makes so many amazing and industry leading products and I thought they'd do well. A couple years later and the stock is just lagging. I guess they're dragged down by their environmental lawsuits these days. As a human, I'm appalled at their environmental track record but as an engineer, wow they really do so many things so well.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
3M is an awesome company. I've worked with them to produce custom adhesives for us ($MM orders). Their products have exceptional quality, reliability and performance. What you see in a datasheet is what you're going to get (or better). 3M's consumer products (Scotch, etc.) are also excellent. Anytime you use 3M products, you don't need to worry. I like that consistency and it brings peace to the mind. I'll pay more for it. Japanese equivalent is Nitto: https://www.nitto.com/us/en/products/ https://www.nitto.com/us/en/products/
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Not just that, but (at least when last I needed this specific service) they had a great phone support system where you could call up and say "I need an adhesive to connect $A to $B and have these curing properties and this strength" and someone would go through their database and make a list for you. Most companies with such a huge array of subtly different products are nowhere near so clear.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  One cool thing now is that 3M releases finite element data packages for adhesive tapes, digital prototyping! https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/bonding-and-assembly-us/resources/full-story/~/fea-data-for-3m-psas/?storyid=ccd4a185-5e5b-4439-83ec-3ede3443231e https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/bonding-and-assembly-us/resource...
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  3M’s consumer abrasives are also remarkably good. Not only are they more effective during use, but they last longer as well, with a much later falloff in abrasion quality. In fact, they last so long that their price (nearly double the price per pad in my case) easily justifies itself. I have no idea what kind of black magic makes it possible but I’m so glad I gave them a try.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  3M, Johnson Johnson, Church Dwight, and a bunch of really householdy name companies are all smack in the middle of NJ. It's a sweet spot if you want to hop a few big corporations in your lifetime and work your way up the chain.
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    Just hold your breath while you're doing so......
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      Yeah, plus in last week's thread, we learned that basically all of these CPG and domestic manufacturers (including some of these blue chip companies were the ones polluting these superfund sites!
      - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
        Good luck finding and collaring those shot-callers at this point!, they're all in New Zealand having a pint.
- kevan 5y ago
  The product quality is awesome. The company has some bad history with chemical dumping and caused at least one superfund site. And used the standard tobacco playbook after finding health concerns with PFAS chemicals in the 1970s to delay the rest of the world from finding out how bad it was. They only started phasing them out in 2000 and paid off at least one academic researcher for another decade to prevent or slow the release of studies showing negative affects.[1] [1] https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/toxic-secrets-professor-bragged-about-burying-bad-science-on-3m-chemicals-20180615-p4zlsc.html https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/toxic-s...
jlebar 5y ago
> A while back I invested in 3M because it's a company that makes so many amazing and industry leading products and I thought they'd do well. A couple years later and the stock is just lagging. The relevant question isn't whether they make great products, but whether their stock is undervalued. We in the tech world are used to "great products" -> "stock price always goes up", but in the "real world" there's no reason for that to be true. "Stock price goes up" should, from an efficient-markets PoV, reflect new information.
- t_mann 5y ago
  And an efficient-market-PoV should, from an investor PoV, be put back on the shelve together with the other econ fairy tales like general equilibrium, rationality,... There's a reason funds prefer to hire STEM PhDs over economists.
  - dTal 5y ago
    No. An "efficient-market-PoV" isn't equivalent to the statement "the market is always 100% efficient", and in fact the entire concept of speculative investing is in fact predicated on this. If you want to beat the market, you must find the place where the market is inefficient, and the only way you can do that is if you know something that everyone else does not know. The "efficient-market-PoV" in this instance is simply - is an observation that 3M makes good products likely to constitute information that is not already factored into the stock price?
    - tdullien 5y ago
      It's a good idea to read up on the history of the efficient market hypothesis, and how Fama came to it. There's also different tiers with different layers of credibility. Base tier (and the one pretty much everybody can agree on): The expected value of the error of the market is zero. This means that the market does not always fundamentally overvalue or undervalue assets, and that, over time, it will overvalue things as often as undervalue. (... many intermediate forms ...) Strong efficient market hypothesis: The market price always reflects all accessible information, and every market movement is driven by new information. The strong efficient market hypothesis is pretty evidently wrong (the existence of all the various quant funds that are generating outsize returns is strong evidence; it would also mean there are no stock bubbles. Having lived through 2 bubbles in my life, I can tell you: Bubbles exist, and there are many forces outside of new information that lead to them inflating and popping).
bee_rider 5y ago
I'm surprised they didn't do well during the pandemic. Their Aura masks were, like, weirdly better than every other mask I tried (at least in terms of comfort).
- crdrost 5y ago
  I feel like they just had an odd look to them, they are a KF94 design recertified as N95. But if you find them comfy when they make a good seal, that's what counts. Some of the comfort may also be the breathability, Auras have a pretty low pressure diff between the inside and outside when in use. If you want that low pressure difference in a traditional N95 style, Indiana Face Mask makes some top notch high-filtration high-breathability N95s that are similar. Both they and the Auras usually test above 99.5% filtration, the Auras usually have a little bit of a petroleum smell but if it's bad enough that it makes the mask deeply unpleasant to wear, you probably have a fake (sometimes factory rejects get resold etc.).
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Agreed, they're the most comfortable ones I found without an exhalation valve. Conveniently they also fold flat. Only downside is that they go behind the head instead of using ear loops.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I can't stand ear loops anyway, they hurt my ears. It helps that my hair has grew out during the whole "don't get close to people" thing. Ponytail + around-head straps is a great combo for maximum snugness (you can loop the top one under and the bottom one over).
    - neltnerb 5y ago
      I think it just varies, but I'm with you. It might be because I also wear glasses, do you? I feel like the ear loops press my glasses harder into my ears, preventing longer term wear (they're great for a half hour, not so good for six hours straight). I mostly use behind the head but foldable ones now, the ones to TC-84A-9315 spec (H95W) are pretty good for me but my nose is a bit too pointy to fit right at the nose. They seem to work really really well for people with slightly flatter features, the little nose metal form doesn't quite hold well enough.
Rebelgecko 5y ago
If you didn't already know, 3M shareholders can sign up for an annual holiday box. It costs money to order, but it's still much cheaper than buying the individual components (although if you don't need command hooks or post-it notes it might not be worth it for you) Full disclosure: I am the proud owner of one share of MMM.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
  Proud, but only one? What's the calculus there, and why proud — if you don't mind me asking?
  - Rebelgecko 5y ago
    It was a slightly tongue in cheek comment :) You need to own at least 1 share to be eligible for the annual gift box, so I own one share. I think it's a solid dividend stock if you're into that kind of thing, but I'm not. I try not to have too much of my portfolio invested in individual stocks, or do anything else that would make the late Jack Bogle disappointed in me.
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      > he preached investment over speculation, long-term patience over short-term action, and reducing broker fees as much as possible. The ideal investment vehicle for Bogle was a low-cost index fund held over a lifetime with dividends reinvested and purchased with dollar cost averaging. Wow, pretty cool guy for a banker — wonder what his "catch" was!
- culopatin 5y ago
  What’s in it and what is the cost?
dale_glass 5y ago
What's important is not only the amazing products, but also that they solve problems and that they can actually be bought by people who need solving those problems. My anecdotal experience is that every time I run into some amazing 3M product, it costs $300/liter. Nile Red recently posted this cool video of extinguishing a book with this fancy 3M liquid. Looked, yup, that's about the price. If you wanted to experiment with fancy computer cooling, Fluorinert is also an arm and a leg in the quantities that'd be needed. It was apparently used in the Cray waterfall, but it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive. And so on.
- onion2k 5y ago
  it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive Fluorinert is a super niche product. The price reflects that. I imagine the cost to produce it has dropped dramatically in 3 decades. 3M just make more profit from it now. As products mature there's no reason to believe the production process and efficiency savings will always be passed on to the consumer.
  - dale_glass 5y ago
    > Fluorinert is a super niche product. I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche". Look at the enthusiast market, there's no lack of fancy water cooling gizmos out there. They're bought by a small segment, but there's still a market for fancy gizmos to provide the best cooling for overclocked high end hardware. And that's exactly what I'm getting at -- it's not enough to make cool stuff. The cool stuff also has to reach the people interested in using it.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      Every ARM Server SoC failed to make their chips available. They do deals with "hyperscalers" and then wonder why nobody wants their chips or the hyperscaler just designs their own chip and makes a dedicated SoC vendor that only sells to "hyperscalers" obsolete.
    - 5y ago
raverbashing 5y ago
The question that we should ask in those cases is: how are their dividend payments going?
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
The stock market has nothing to do with the performance of a company; they are unrelated. Investing means betting on other investors to want to bump up the stock; it turned out to be really effective for e.g. Tesla where a lot of gullible amateurs got on top of it as well. (I am one of those btw, I've sold what I had left early in the year and made a nice profit. Didn't get rich because you need to have money to make money, but it was a nice extra).
- regularfry 5y ago
  That's speculating, rather than investing. Not to denigrate the practice, just to be clear on the terminology.
shireboy 5y ago
At least part of the reason 3M stock price doesn't rise as much is because they distribute a dividend.
kurupt213 5y ago
3M being innovative is already priced in

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

systemvoltage 5y ago

3M is an awesome company. I've worked with them to produce custom adhesives for us ($MM orders). Their products have exceptional quality, reliability and performance. What you see in a datasheet is what you're going to get (or better). 3M's consumer products (Scotch, etc.) are also excellent. Anytime you use 3M products, you don't need to worry. I like that consistency and it brings peace to the mind. I'll pay more for it. Japanese equivalent is Nitto: https://www.nitto.com/us/en/products/ https://www.nitto.com/us/en/products/

InitialLastName 5y ago
Not just that, but (at least when last I needed this specific service) they had a great phone support system where you could call up and say "I need an adhesive to connect $A to $B and have these curing properties and this strength" and someone would go through their database and make a list for you. Most companies with such a huge array of subtly different products are nowhere near so clear.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
One cool thing now is that 3M releases finite element data packages for adhesive tapes, digital prototyping! https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/bonding-and-assembly-us/resources/full-story/~/fea-data-for-3m-psas/?storyid=ccd4a185-5e5b-4439-83ec-3ede3443231e https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/bonding-and-assembly-us/resource...
steve_adams_86 5y ago
3M’s consumer abrasives are also remarkably good. Not only are they more effective during use, but they last longer as well, with a much later falloff in abrasion quality. In fact, they last so long that their price (nearly double the price per pad in my case) easily justifies itself. I have no idea what kind of black magic makes it possible but I’m so glad I gave them a try.
calvinmorrison 5y ago
3M, Johnson Johnson, Church Dwight, and a bunch of really householdy name companies are all smack in the middle of NJ. It's a sweet spot if you want to hop a few big corporations in your lifetime and work your way up the chain.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
  Just hold your breath while you're doing so......
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    Yeah, plus in last week's thread, we learned that basically all of these CPG and domestic manufacturers (including some of these blue chip companies were the ones polluting these superfund sites!
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      Good luck finding and collaring those shot-callers at this point!, they're all in New Zealand having a pint.
kevan 5y ago
The product quality is awesome. The company has some bad history with chemical dumping and caused at least one superfund site. And used the standard tobacco playbook after finding health concerns with PFAS chemicals in the 1970s to delay the rest of the world from finding out how bad it was. They only started phasing them out in 2000 and paid off at least one academic researcher for another decade to prevent or slow the release of studies showing negative affects.[1] [1] https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/toxic-secrets-professor-bragged-about-burying-bad-science-on-3m-chemicals-20180615-p4zlsc.html https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/toxic-s...

jlebar 5y ago

> A while back I invested in 3M because it's a company that makes so many amazing and industry leading products and I thought they'd do well. A couple years later and the stock is just lagging. The relevant question isn't whether they make great products, but whether their stock is undervalued. We in the tech world are used to "great products" -> "stock price always goes up", but in the "real world" there's no reason for that to be true. "Stock price goes up" should, from an efficient-markets PoV, reflect new information.

t_mann 5y ago
And an efficient-market-PoV should, from an investor PoV, be put back on the shelve together with the other econ fairy tales like general equilibrium, rationality,... There's a reason funds prefer to hire STEM PhDs over economists.
- dTal 5y ago
  No. An "efficient-market-PoV" isn't equivalent to the statement "the market is always 100% efficient", and in fact the entire concept of speculative investing is in fact predicated on this. If you want to beat the market, you must find the place where the market is inefficient, and the only way you can do that is if you know something that everyone else does not know. The "efficient-market-PoV" in this instance is simply - is an observation that 3M makes good products likely to constitute information that is not already factored into the stock price?
  - tdullien 5y ago
    It's a good idea to read up on the history of the efficient market hypothesis, and how Fama came to it. There's also different tiers with different layers of credibility. Base tier (and the one pretty much everybody can agree on): The expected value of the error of the market is zero. This means that the market does not always fundamentally overvalue or undervalue assets, and that, over time, it will overvalue things as often as undervalue. (... many intermediate forms ...) Strong efficient market hypothesis: The market price always reflects all accessible information, and every market movement is driven by new information. The strong efficient market hypothesis is pretty evidently wrong (the existence of all the various quant funds that are generating outsize returns is strong evidence; it would also mean there are no stock bubbles. Having lived through 2 bubbles in my life, I can tell you: Bubbles exist, and there are many forces outside of new information that lead to them inflating and popping).

bee_rider 5y ago

I'm surprised they didn't do well during the pandemic. Their Aura masks were, like, weirdly better than every other mask I tried (at least in terms of comfort).

crdrost 5y ago
I feel like they just had an odd look to them, they are a KF94 design recertified as N95. But if you find them comfy when they make a good seal, that's what counts. Some of the comfort may also be the breathability, Auras have a pretty low pressure diff between the inside and outside when in use. If you want that low pressure difference in a traditional N95 style, Indiana Face Mask makes some top notch high-filtration high-breathability N95s that are similar. Both they and the Auras usually test above 99.5% filtration, the Auras usually have a little bit of a petroleum smell but if it's bad enough that it makes the mask deeply unpleasant to wear, you probably have a fake (sometimes factory rejects get resold etc.).
Rebelgecko 5y ago
Agreed, they're the most comfortable ones I found without an exhalation valve. Conveniently they also fold flat. Only downside is that they go behind the head instead of using ear loops.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I can't stand ear loops anyway, they hurt my ears. It helps that my hair has grew out during the whole "don't get close to people" thing. Ponytail + around-head straps is a great combo for maximum snugness (you can loop the top one under and the bottom one over).
  - neltnerb 5y ago
    I think it just varies, but I'm with you. It might be because I also wear glasses, do you? I feel like the ear loops press my glasses harder into my ears, preventing longer term wear (they're great for a half hour, not so good for six hours straight). I mostly use behind the head but foldable ones now, the ones to TC-84A-9315 spec (H95W) are pretty good for me but my nose is a bit too pointy to fit right at the nose. They seem to work really really well for people with slightly flatter features, the little nose metal form doesn't quite hold well enough.

Rebelgecko 5y ago

If you didn't already know, 3M shareholders can sign up for an annual holiday box. It costs money to order, but it's still much cheaper than buying the individual components (although if you don't need command hooks or post-it notes it might not be worth it for you) Full disclosure: I am the proud owner of one share of MMM.

aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
Proud, but only one? What's the calculus there, and why proud — if you don't mind me asking?
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  It was a slightly tongue in cheek comment :) You need to own at least 1 share to be eligible for the annual gift box, so I own one share. I think it's a solid dividend stock if you're into that kind of thing, but I'm not. I try not to have too much of my portfolio invested in individual stocks, or do anything else that would make the late Jack Bogle disappointed in me.
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    > he preached investment over speculation, long-term patience over short-term action, and reducing broker fees as much as possible. The ideal investment vehicle for Bogle was a low-cost index fund held over a lifetime with dividends reinvested and purchased with dollar cost averaging. Wow, pretty cool guy for a banker — wonder what his "catch" was!
culopatin 5y ago
What’s in it and what is the cost?

dale_glass 5y ago

What's important is not only the amazing products, but also that they solve problems and that they can actually be bought by people who need solving those problems. My anecdotal experience is that every time I run into some amazing 3M product, it costs $300/liter. Nile Red recently posted this cool video of extinguishing a book with this fancy 3M liquid. Looked, yup, that's about the price. If you wanted to experiment with fancy computer cooling, Fluorinert is also an arm and a leg in the quantities that'd be needed. It was apparently used in the Cray waterfall, but it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive. And so on.

onion2k 5y ago
it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive Fluorinert is a super niche product. The price reflects that. I imagine the cost to produce it has dropped dramatically in 3 decades. 3M just make more profit from it now. As products mature there's no reason to believe the production process and efficiency savings will always be passed on to the consumer.
- dale_glass 5y ago
  > Fluorinert is a super niche product. I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche". Look at the enthusiast market, there's no lack of fancy water cooling gizmos out there. They're bought by a small segment, but there's still a market for fancy gizmos to provide the best cooling for overclocked high end hardware. And that's exactly what I'm getting at -- it's not enough to make cool stuff. The cool stuff also has to reach the people interested in using it.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Every ARM Server SoC failed to make their chips available. They do deals with "hyperscalers" and then wonder why nobody wants their chips or the hyperscaler just designs their own chip and makes a dedicated SoC vendor that only sells to "hyperscalers" obsolete.
  - 5y ago

raverbashing 5y ago

The question that we should ask in those cases is: how are their dividend payments going?

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

The stock market has nothing to do with the performance of a company; they are unrelated. Investing means betting on other investors to want to bump up the stock; it turned out to be really effective for e.g. Tesla where a lot of gullible amateurs got on top of it as well. (I am one of those btw, I've sold what I had left early in the year and made a nice profit. Didn't get rich because you need to have money to make money, but it was a nice extra).

regularfry 5y ago
That's speculating, rather than investing. Not to denigrate the practice, just to be clear on the terminology.

shireboy 5y ago

At least part of the reason 3M stock price doesn't rise as much is because they distribute a dividend.

kurupt213 5y ago

3M being innovative is already priced in