This Is the Best Performing Stock of 2020

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 28, 6:45AM EDT · Published Sep 27, 7:08AM EDT

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This Is the Best Performing Stock of 2020 — © Zinkevych / Getty Images

Carrier Global Corp. (NYSE: CARR | CARR Price Prediction) is in several boring businesses. It only went public on April 3. However, it is the best performing stock among the S&P 500, higher by 153%, while the index is flat.

Carrier builds heating and refrigeration products. It was spun out from decades-old conglomerate United Technologies, a company that decided it was worth more to shareholders in parts than as a whole. For a public corporation that is not universally known on Wall St., Carrier is unusually large with 52,000 employees in 160 countries.

Perhaps the reason that Carrier’s shares have moved up is something that CEO Dave Gitlin said: “Against the backdrop of unprecedented global uncertainty, Carrier and its employees remain focused and continue to solve critical challenges – from improving indoor air quality, protecting the world’s food and pharmaceutical supply and keeping people safe and secure” The “safe and secure” part is among the reasons Carrier’s products, which, among other things, clean and circulate air, are in such demand.

Several weeks ago, Bloomberg ran an article headlined “What Sells in a Pandemic? Weight Watchers, Pools and Cereal.” Carrier made the shortlist. “HVAC systems have been another spending hot spot because a broken air conditioner makes spending 24/7 inside a home even more of a challenge. Proper ventilation is also a critical tool for combating the coronavirus. Orders for residential HVAC systems were up 100% in June compared with those in the month a year earlier…”

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Carrier also handily beat earnings estimates for the second quarter. Ironically, revenue and earnings were down. However, the company’s forecast for the balance of the year was raised. Revenue dropped 20% to $4 billion for the quarter. Operating income fell 45% to $442 million.

The forecast revenue range of the year before the earnings announcement was $15 billion to $17. It was raised to $15.5 to $17 billion. The range of operating profit was raised to $1.8 billion to $2 billion, up from $1.7 billion to $2 billion.

Now, all Carrier probably needs to do to keep its shares on the rise is to beat those numbers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.