#7 - Sherwin-Williams (NYSE:SHW)
The last stock to look at is Sherwin-Williams (NYSE:SHW), and I’ll admit it’s a seasonal play. Fall and winter become one of the best times for homeowners to start painting both inside and out. The lower humidity means less moisture in the air and faster drying paint.
Enough about the weather, though. Let’s look at the stock, which is up just a modest 20% for the year. Still, the company has been able to post beats on the top and bottom lines throughout the pandemic. That being said, expectations have gotten high, and it will be interesting to see if the company delivers when it reports earnings later in October.
Sherwin-Williams got a boost from home renovation projects during the pandemic, even though most of its stores were shut down, at least temporarily. Now the company is likely to catch a tailwind from the surge in home buying.
Sherwin-Williams is also somewhat attractive to value investors. The company not only maintained its dividend, but it also increased it by 21 cents in February.
About Sherwin-Williams
The Sherwin-Williams Company engages in the development, manufacture, distribution, and sale of paints, coating, and related products to professional, industrial, commercial, and retail customers. It operates through three segments: Paint Stores Group, Consumer Brands Group, and Performance Coatings Group.
Read More - Current Price
- $345.47
- Consensus Rating
- Moderate Buy
- Ratings Breakdown
- 12 Buy Ratings, 6 Hold Ratings, 1 Sell Ratings.
- Consensus Price Target
- $397.63 (15.1% Upside)
This is one of the more interesting economic outlooks of our time. On the one hand, the pandemic is creating genuine hardships for many Americans. The gross domestic product of the United States declined at an annualized rate of over 32% in the second quarter. That was the largest such drop in our nation’s history.
Realistically GDP is likely to stay constricted until the nation can get back to a pre-pandemic life. And that means finding a solution to the puzzle of the novel coronavirus.
On the other hand, it has created what we may look back on as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy homes at such incredibly low rates.
For those of us old enough to remember, this is a narrative that’s been going on since the mid-1990s. And even after the housing crash that brought on the great recession in 2007, the housing market continues to come back.
The conditions that are creating this housing market will remain in place well into 2021, and quite possibly beyond that. And that means that there are opportunities to benefit from the companies that stand to benefit the most from this growth.
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