Racine-based Twin Disc Inc. and Milwaukee-based Gardner Denver have been added to the broad-market Russell 3000 index and will also be part of the small-cap Russell 2000 and large-cap Russell 1000 respectively.
John Batten, Twin Disc president and chief executive officer, said inclusion in the indices was a reflection on the work the maker of marine and heavy-duty off-highway power transmission equipment has done in recent quarters.
“Twin Disc has successfully responded to challenging conditions across many of the company’s markets, by proactively reducing and controlling operating expenses, while maintaining world-class product and customer support and delivering continued product innovations,” Batten said. “This commitment continues to position Twin Disc as a leader throughout its end markets.”
Twin Disc’s revenue is down 7.3 percent to $114.6 million through the first three quarters of its current fiscal year, but the company has improved its gross profit 6.8 percent while also cutting marketing, engineering and administrative expenses 11.7 percent. Those savings haven’t resulted in a sharp improvement in earnings as the company incurred $1.4 million restructuring charges and $2.6 million goodwill and impairment charges.
The most recent quarter did show signs of improvement as revenue increased 8.8 percent to $45.1 million.
Inclusion in the Russell 3000 is based on a ranking of the 4,000 largest U.S. stocks at the end of May based on total market capitalization. Twin Disc’s stock price improved from $9.77 at the end of May 2016 to $17.90 on May 31 this year with roughly the same number of shares outstanding.
Inclusion in the index is good for one year and also results in automatic inclusion in the Russell 1000 large-cap or Russell 2000 small-cap index along with other growth or value style indexes as determined by FTSE Russell.
Gardner Denver returned to public trading earlier this year after it was acquired by KKR in 2013. KKR continues to own a majority of the company’s shares, but the IPO drew headlines as the company gave employees $100 million in stock.
Vicente Reynal, Gardner Denver CEO, said the company was honored to be included in the Russell index.
“This achievement speaks to the Gardner Denver strategy of being a premier Industrial manufacturer of equipment and associated aftermarket and delivering consistent profitable growth for our shareholders,” he said.
Green Bay-based trucking firm Schneider National, which also went public in the last year, was also added to the Russell 3000 while Milwaukee-based Strattec Security Corp. was removed from the list.
