It hasn't been a vintage few years for 3M (NYSE: MMM). The stock has underperformed the S&P 500 by 30% since the start of 2016 and has declined 15% in the last year compared to a 7% gain in the index. What's going on, and does the latest set of earnings change anything about the investment case for the stock?
To understand what's happened to 3M in the last few years, you have to rewind to the 2015-to-2017 period. Coming off the back of a good 2014, the company's growth in the next two years faltered due to the same sentence weakness in U.S. industrial production, which was largely caused by collapsing energy prices. In fact, the mid-2015-to-mid-2016 period was the first in 50 years in which a recession in U.S. industrial production occurred without being accompanied by an overall economic recession -- tough times for industrials with heavy industry exposure.
Bulls and bears continue to do battle over 3M stock. Image source: Getty Images.
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