A few people are discussing Newell Brands Inc (NWL)'s poor stock performance over the last decade, and how that makes it hard to sell as a success story. As bgw

A few people are discussing Newell Brands Inc (NWL)'s poor stock performance over the last decade, and how that makes it hard to sell as a success story. As bgwalter points out, there was a large drop of NWL's share price, particularly between june 2017 ($53.35 / share) and june 2019 ($15.36 USD). Looking at historical financial metrics [1] over this period provides some insight about the stock price drop: 2016 2017 2018 2019 Revenue ($b) 13 15 9 10 Op Margin(%) 9 10 7 8 EBIT Margin(%) 9 13 -91 -6 Their revenue had been growing, then in 2018 their revenue dropped by around 40%, breaking the trend of "increasing revenue" and "increasing EBIT margin". So that explains why we might expect a large decrease in share price, if investor narratives changed from a "growth company" story to a "declining company" story. Reported earnings were negative for 2018, 2019 and 2020. A Forbes article from 2019 [2] provides some context that may explain large revenue drop: > Over the last year or so, the company has offloaded many non-core businesses (such as sporting goods maker Rawlings, packaging manufacturer Waddington, and Pure Fishing – a maker of fishing equipment) to trim its portfolio and cut costs. Moreover, the asset sales have helped the company prune down its debt, which stood at about $6.7 billion at the end of June, down from close to $11 billion two years ago. Aha: searching for "Newell restated financials" dug up this interesting gem [3]. In 2023 the SEC charged Newell and the former CEO Michael Polk with misleading investors: > The SEC’s order finds that, in 2016 and 2017, Newell and Polk took actions that increased the company’s publicly disclosed core sales growth in ways that were out of step with Newell’s actual but undisclosed sales trends, allowing the company to announce “strong” or “solid” results in quarters it internally described as disappointing due to shortfalls in sales. According to the order, Newell pulled sales forward into earlier quarters without adequate disclosure and engaged in accounting practices that were inconsistent with GAAP, while overriding its internal accounting controls. Collectively, these measures gave the misleading appearance that Newell had achieved core sales growth in line with its targets and deprived investors of information relevant to an accurate and complete understanding of Newell’s actual sales trends. So former CEO Polk engaged in financial shenanigans during 2016 and 2017 to cook the books and make sales growth appear better to investors than they actually were, shaping NWL as a growth story. They weren't able to maintain the charade in 2018. [1] https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnas/nwl/key-metrics https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnas/nwl/key-metrics [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/24/how-newell-brands-recent-divestitures-and-deleveraging-are-paying-off/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/10/24/ho... [3] https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023-210 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023-210