OSAKA, Japan (BRAIN) — Shimano, Inc.'s stock price closed at its highest price ever last week, and the 99-year-old component giant's stock continues to trade at historically high levels as investors anticipate growth in the bike market due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several bike-related companies — including Giant, Accell Group, Thule Group, Fox Factory, MIPS and Dorel Industries — have shown similar stock price patterns in recent weeks, mostly paralleling the recovery in international market indexes. After bottoming out with the market in mid-March, they've been on a steady climb since, peaking in the middle of this week before slight declines before the weekend.
Shimano's curve since March is similar — but steeper. Most stocks have rebounded significantly since their lows in late March or early April, but are still trading below their historic highs, and in some cases are still below their prices immediately before the pandemic.
- Fox Factory, for example, was trading as high $76.18 per share in February and as high as $86 per share last July. Fox bottomed out at $36.15 per share on April 2 and closed at $72.11 on Friday.
- Accell was trading as high as 29.30 euros per share in February and fell to 12.50 euros on March 30. It returned to a high of 24.30 this week.
- Giant Manufacturing's stock has done quite well. It rebounded to well beyond its trading price before the pandemic (which was about 177NT$) to 235NT$ this week. But Giant is still trading below its 12-month high of 249NT$ and below its record highs above 300NT$ in early 2015.
In comparison, Shimano quickly zoomed past the price it was trading at before the pandemic (about 18,000 yen per share) to close at an all-time record high of 20,460 yen ($190) per share on May 18. It was trading at 19,820 yen Friday.
Shimano's previous high was 19,300 yen in March 2015.
A Bloomberg news report this week said, "Investors are betting that more and more people will turn to bicycles as a way to avoid congested public transportation as France, the U.K. and other countries start to ease lockdown measures."
Bloomberg noted that Shimano took a hit when COVID forced it to temporarily close factories in Singapore and Malaysia. And the news service interviewed CEO Yozo Shimano, who said the company will rethink its supply chain following the pandemic.
"Like all the other manufacturing companies, we want to take this opportunity to revisit our supply chain," he told Bloomberg.
More information: Shimano stock chart on Yahoo Finance.
