Meritor
Ticker: MTOR
YTD stock performance: -74%
Market cap: $503 million
Fortune 500 rank: 463
Meritor made the list of top-performing stocks last year, but investors have turned bearish on the maker of commercial truck parts.
The stock is down 71% this year, erasing all of last year's gains, and then some.
Meritor said in November that fiscal 2011 sales rose 31% on "strengthening truck demand in all regions." But the company's forecast for fiscal 2012 sales growth was well below what analysts were expecting.
Investors are worried about declining truck volumes in Europe and Brazil, as well as softening demand for construction equipment in China. They are also unhappy with Meritor's weak cash flow and lackluster profit margins.
This combination of factors "leads us to believe that it will take [Meritor] several quarters to re-establish confidence in its earnings power," analysts at Barclay's Capital wrote in a recent report.
