America's Great Shrinking Companies

After three years of powerful economic expansion prior to 2008, the Great Recession caused the revenues of many American companies to plunge to multi-year lows. While sales at most big companies have rebounded to pre-recession levels by 2012, sales plummeted at a small number of companies.

Some of those public corporations that have struggled to regain pre-recession sales levels are in the industries most hurt by the downturn. First among them is the auto industry. Two of the Big Three American car manufacturers went into bankruptcy as their annual sales dropped rapidly. Even Ford (NYSE: F), which managed to stay out of Chapter 11, barely made it through 2008 and 2009. Then, even as the U.S. market recovered and car sales rebounded significantly, Europe remained in the doldrums, still hurting international revenues for the American manufacturers.

Another industry that, for the most part, has not fully recovered is homebuilding companies. The recession robbed homes in some cities of 50% of their value. There was a significant top line erosion among large builders such as D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI), Pulte, and Lennar, and all three have struggled to recover the lost sales.

Perhaps hardest hit were America’s banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies. Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 as a means to rescue dozens of financial institutions. Some, like Lehman Brothers, disappeared. Others, like AIG (NYSE:AIG), almost did. Even hardy financial firms, including Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), took government aid.

The last significant group of companies where sales have eroded is companies that have restructured. Often, the restructuring happened because managements and boards of directors believed shareholders would be better off if these companies were split in two or more pieces, rather than remain whole.

In some cases, this decision was made because one part of a company did not fit well with the rest. The best example of this among very large companies is GE’s (NYSE: GE) sale of network and studio business NBCUniversal to Comcast. The shareholders of the cable company were considered more likely to benefit from holding these assets than the shareholders of a conglomerate like GE.

Another example of a spin off occurred with decades-old Motorola. While it was most well known for its cell phone business, Motorola also had divisions that sold products to other companies and enterprises but not to consumers. Motorola’s board believed investors would be better off if the consumer and enterprise businesses were separated and the company broken into two pieces.

In the cases of some of these shrinking businesses, including AIG, Tyco, and Citi, they have been in the practice of spinning off operations by the dozens. Tyco International (NYSE:TYC) CEO Edward Breen has been selling off components of the company since he took over in 2002.

In order to identify the companies with shrinking revenue, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the S&P 500 companies that have had the largest declines in revenue during their last five full fiscal years. Companies that filed for bankruptcy were excluded from the analysis.

These are America’s great shrinking companies.

1. ConocoPhillips

Over the last five years, ConocoPhillips’ (NYSE: COP) revenue has shrunk by more than $116 billion, from just over $177 billion to just over $60 billion. Ironically, ConocoPhillips may have first begun to shrink with its 2006 acquisition of  Burlington Resources for $35.6 billion, which it bought with the intention of becoming the nation’s largest natural gas producer. This move backfired, however, as natural gas prices sank. In recent years, ConocoPhillips began to sell assets, spinning-off its refining and pipeline business in 2012 into a new company, Phillips 66. Along with the spin-off went much of ConocoPhillips’ revenue — Phillips 66 generated over $166 million in revenue in 2012.

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2. Marathon Oil Corporation

Similar to ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil’s (NYSE: MRO)contraction was the result of the spin-off of its refining operations, forming Marathon Petroleum in mid 2011. This cost the oil giant a massive chunk of its revenues. The company’s revenue was less than $16 billion in 2012, down from nearly $72 billion four years prior. In 2012, Marathon Petroleum’s revenue was nearly $77 billion, and it also spun off some of its operations into a master limited partnership (MLP). Such MLPs are becoming increasingly more popular in the energy industry and among investors because they offer favorable tax benefits.

3. Ford Motor Co.

Ford was the only one of the Big Three automakers which made it through the massive restructuring of the American car industry without a federal bailout. However, the company was undeniably damaged by the recession. In the U.S., Ford sold light cars and trucks at an annualized rate of more than 16 million for much of 2006 and 2007. But by early 2009, sales had plunged to a rate of barely more than 9 million vehicles per year. Although sales have recovered somewhat in the U.S., the company’s business has continued to struggle in Europe, where new vehicle sales have dropped by nearly 10% through the first half of the year.

4. Motorola Solutions, Inc.

As recently as 2007, Motorola was still the world’s second-largest mobile phone company by sales, with more than 164 million phones sold that year and a 14.3% share of the market. But as Apple and Android based devices continued to become more and more popular, Motorola’s market share was wiped away, falling to less than 2% in 2012. In early 2011, Motorola announced the long-anticipated split of the company’s operations. It separated the business solutions functions from the consumer-facing mobile phones segment into two separate companies, Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) and Motorola Mobility. While Motorola Mobility survived only briefly as a standalone company before being acquired by Google, Motorola Solutions has managed to grow both its sales and become profitable since the split.

5. General Electric Company

General Electric finally closed the deal to sell a 51% controlling stake in NBCUniversal to Comcast in early 2011, more than a year after a deal had first been announced. In the previous fiscal year, NBC Universal had accounted for nearly 17 billion of the conglomerate’s total revenue. The deal gave Comcast majority ownership of NBC, as well as ownership of Universal Studios. Still, part of NBC Universal remained under GE ownership until earlier this year, when the company sold the remaining 49% of its stake to Comcast.

6. Citigroup Inc.

Citigroup’s (NYSE: C) revenues dove during the recession, when the bank recorded a loss of nearly $28 billion in 2008 and received $45 billion in aid. Although all of the bailout money has since been repaid, Citi has had to continue searching for assets and operations to shed in order to ensure its long-term future. Life insurance company Primerica and Citi’s stake in Morgan Stanley Smith Barney — a wealth management joint venture with Morgan Stanley — were among the dozens of businesses Citigroup has managed to shed in recent years. When Citigroup named Michael Corbat CEO in October 2012, the company touted his work in overseeing Citi’s divestiture of more than $500 billion in assets.

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7. American International Group, Inc.

AIG’s insurance obligations on a massive quantity of financial instruments by the end of fiscal year 2008 led to a mammoth $99 billion loss. Finding it was unable to meet its financial obligations, the insurance giant received a massive $182 billion bailout from the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to keep it from collapsing. Although both government entities eventually exited their investments, AIG was forced to sell tens of billions of dollars in assets to repay the aid money. In the process, it lost numerous business units and foreign operations. Currently, AIG has returned to profitability and even intends to return money to shareholders for the first time in years.

8. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Goldman Sachs’ net revenues and earnings have fluctuated in the last five years. But during the heart of the financial crisis, from 2007 to 2008, the firm’s earnings fell by nearly 80%. Goldman was one of several major banks that received early aid from the Treasury in order to ensure its solvency. Since the financial crisis, the investment bank has had to change several of its major business practices. In 2010, the firm wound down its proprietary trading desk. The company highlighted several factors keeping revenue low in 2012, including concerns about the global economy, and the movement by investors to assets that generated lower commissions.

9. Tyco International Ltd.

Tyco’s revenue has fallen by more nearly $10 billion over the last four years, from $19.7 billion to $10.4 billion in 2012. The infamous Dennis Kozlowsky previously served as the acquisition-hungry, and crooked, CEO of the former conglomerate. The company, which now provides security and fire safety services and products, has spent years spinning off or selling subsidiaries. Last year, Tyco’s flow control business merged with Pentair Inc. to form Pentair Ltd., while the company also spun off home security business ADT Corp. as its own standalone company. Past subsidiaries or operations that are also now their own standalone public companies include healthcare company Covidien and lender CIT Group.

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10. D.R. Horton, Inc.

D.R. Horton is the largest homebuilder in America. It has faced extreme headwinds in the last several years. As home prices collapsed throughout much of the nation during the housing crisis, the company’s revenue fell from $11.3 billion to $3.7 billion in just two years. Also, from fiscal 2007 through fiscal 2009, the company had a total net loss that exceeded $4 billion. While home prices have been on the rise — up 7.3% in May from the year before — interest rates have also began increasing. The higher mortgage cost could potentially push away some buyers. According to The Wall Street Journal, new home orders with D.R. Horton rose 12% in the second quarter of 2013, but fell short of expectations.

11. J.C. Penney Company, Inc.

J.C. Penney’s (NYSE: JCP) sales have declined at an average of 8.2% for the last five years. The company’s revenue of just under $13 billion in fiscal 2012 is far lower than its fiscal 2007 revenue figure of close to $20 billion. The retailer’s same-store sales have plummeted in recent years. They fell by 25.2% last year alone, and there’s no end in sight to the company’s downward trajectory. In April, the company fired its CEO, Ron Johnson, after just over a year of service, and brought back former CEO Mike Ullman, who had himself lost the position after overseeing a decline in performance. Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman quit the board because of his dissatisfaction with Ullman. As the company searches for a new CEO, there is also speculation it might go private.