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BUSINESSMonday 4 January 2016
Wall Street Wrap: 2015 market winners, losers
MARLEY JAY
AP Markets Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — In a
flat year overall for stocks,
there was still plenty of ex-
citement to be enjoyed
— or endured — by 2015’s
biggest winners and losers.
It was a year to make old
guard companies shudder.
New media companies like
Netflix, which rose 134 per-
The Netflix logo is displayed at the company’s headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. Netflix has en-
joyed top billing before: it was the biggest gainer in the S&P 500 in 2010 and 2013, and more than
tripled in value both years. But another big year in 2015 pushed the company’s value past estab-
lished media rivals like CBS and made it about the same size as Time Warner.
cent to notch the biggest
gain in the S&P 500, be-
came more valuable than
established media compa-
nies like CBS. Amazon evis-
cerated traditional retailers
like Macy’s and Walmart.
And energy and materials
companies were flattened
by weak demand at a time
of abundant supplies. The
biggest loser was Chesa-
peake Energy, down 77
percent in 2015.
Apple, the biggest pub-
licly traded company in
the world, fell for the first
time since 2008. Apple had
climbed 11 times in the last
12 years before 2015. The
company, which joined
the Dow Jones industrial
average earlier this year,
is almost double the size of
Exxon Mobil.
The Dow, dominated by
long-established compa-
nies in traditional industries, sent investors into a buying
fell 2.2 percent for the year.
The Nasdaq composite,
with its heavy concentra-
tion of technology compa-
nies, gained a respectable
5.7 percent.
Here are the stories behind
some of the stock markets
biggest winners and losers
for 2015.
ANOTHER STAR TURN FOR
NETFLIX
Netflix has enjoyed top bill- Mart stock fell 29 percent
ing before: it was the big-
gest gainer in the S&P 500
in 2010 and 2013, and it
more than tripled in value
both years.
But another big year in
2015 pushed the compa-
ny’s value past established
media rivals like CBS and
made it about the same as
Time Warner. The streaming
entertainment service had
69 million subscribers at the “This year seemed to mark
end of the third quarter,
and almost a quarter of
those signed up in the last
year. Netflix also continued
to win fans for shows like
“Orange is the New Black”
and “Narcos.” The com-
pany says its service will be said Amazon was “almost
available in 200 countries
by the end of the year.
AMAZONIAN
PROPORTIONS
E-commerce giant Ama-
zon celebrated its 20th an-
niversary with results that
frenzy. Amazon was the
second biggest gainer in
the S&P 500 for the year, up
118 percent. The company
is on track to report more WARCRAFT GETS A CANDY
than $100 billion in revenue CRUSH
in 2015 and it has started to The third biggest gainer in
turn in higher profits more the S&P 500 was Activision
frequently despite a loss in Blizzard, the video game
the first quarter. maker behind “Call of
Its stock surge pushed the Duty” and “World of War-
company’s market val- craft.” It rose 92 percent
ue past that of longtime as it moved to expand into
competitor Wal-Mart. Wal- the sweeter side of games.
In November the company
in 2015, which made this agreed to buy King Enter-
tainment, the maker of the
smartphone hit “Candy
Crush Saga,” to strength-
en its mobile games busi-
ness. It is also working on a
“World of Warcraft” movie
and a TV show adapted
(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) from its kid-focused “Sky-
landers” game. The rest of
Wal-Mart’s worst year since the top ten winners in the
index were a mix of com-
1974, when it had fewer panies representing sever-
al industries, including the
than 100 stores. Wal-Mart video graphics chip maker
NVIDIA, the payments pro-
was the Dow’s biggest los- cessor Total System Ser-
vices, the website domain
er. name company VeriSign,
and Spam maker Hormel
Foods. First Solar also made
the top 10, getting a major
an inflection point for Ama- boost when Congress ex-
tended tax breaks for solar
zon,” wrote Christine Short, installations in December.
an analyst at Estimize, who THE BIGGEST LOSERS
Seven of the 10 biggest
losers in the S&P 500 were
energy companies, led by
solely responsible for the Chesapeake Energy, Con-
sol Energy and Southwest-
downfall of big box giant ern Energy. All three are
dependent on the price
Wal-Mart.” of natural gas and all fell
between 70 percent and
Macy’s and Staples also 80 percent this year. Nine
energy companies in the
were among the 20 big- index lost at least half their firm said in its report.
value.
gest losers as fewer shop- A big reason: Mother Na-
ture. An extraordinarily
pers trekked to stores and warm fall and early winter
in the U.S. is slashing de-
bought more goods online mand for heating, and half
the nation uses natural gas
instead. Amazon is now to heat their homes. Natu-
ral gas supplies were al-
in a battle with the other ready high coming into the
winter. That combined with
high-flying stock of 2015: low demand pushed natu-
ral gas prices to their lowest of Japan Post, which took
Amazon and Netflix are ri- levels since 1999 in mid-De-
cember.
vals in creating original en- The rout in crude oil prices
that began in mid-2014
tertainment for subscribers. deepened in 2015, pull-
ing down the value of oil
This year the two snagged company shares and the
performance of the overall
almost 50 Primetime Emmy stock market.q
nominations between
them. Netflix shows re-
ceived far more nomina-
tions but Amazon’s shows
won five Emmys to Netflix’s
four.
Market volatility
causes IPO market
to stall over 2015
KEN SWEET
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The vol-
atile trading that defined
2015 led to a very chop-
py market for companies
wanting to go public.
The number of U.S. compa-
nies that successfully made
an initial public offering
of stock in 2015 dropped
by more than 40 percent
compared with 2014, ac-
cording to a report by IPO
research firm Renaissance
Capital.
The amount raised was
considerably less as well,
falling to $30 billion in 2015
from $85.3 billion. The drop-
off was the result of signifi-
cantly reduced ambitions
from companies as they hit
the market, as well as wari-
ness of investors rattled by
sharp swings on Wall Street,
particularly in the second
half of the year.
The August downturn and
a U.S. market correction
in September convinced
a lot of companies to put
their plans to go public on
hold, Renaissance Capital
said.
“For the first eight months
of the year, the IPO mar-
ket was on target to reach
over 200 IPOs with solid re-
turns, but went into a tail-
spin in August and Septem-
ber that wiped out positive
performance, drove ab-
normally high IPO discounts
and brought issuance to a
near halt by year-end,” the
IPO activity stalled not only
in the U.S., but around the
world. The amount of mon-
ey raised in IPOs globally
was $156.2 billion, down
35 percent from a year
earlier. Asia was still a sig-
nificant driver, even with
the problems in the Chi-
nese stock market. That
was due largely, however,
to the initial public offering
its bank, insurance and
holding companies public
in three separate transac-
tions in October. That com-
bination IPO raised $12 bil-
lion.
The industry that had the
largest number of IPOs was
health care, followed by
energy. q