Annual Russell Shuffle puts Supervalu in the Russell Microcap Index

It is the Russell Shuffle, each June the Russell U.S. stock market indexes get a major reconstitution including the Russell 3000 and Microcap Indexes.

The indexes are adjusted to account for stocks that have been added to or removed from the stock market. They also recognize the growth of successful companies and move them up to the more appropriate index and move companies who have shrunk to a smaller index.

One notable addition to the Russell Microcap Index is Supervalu. The drop to the Microcap Index might be humbling for Supervalu, with $14.2 billion in annual revenue it is also one of Minnesota's Fortune 500 companies (the Fortune 500 is based on total annual revenue).

An annual review by the team at global index provider FTSE Russell is needed to ensure the indexes remain representative of the market's current state.

The annual reconstitution process starts with all publicly traded US companies and then removes those not eligible. Companies are then ranked in descending order by market capitalization as of May 11. The team then determines the absolute breakpoint on where the indexes should be divided ­- the breakpoints shift each year based on overall market performance.

The Russell 3000 is made up of the top 3,000 US stocks by market capitalization and covers 98 percent of the US equity investable universe. The Russell 1000 and Russell 2000 are subsets of the Russell 3000,

The Russell Microcap Index contains approximately 1,500 stocks and represents less than 3 percent of the US equity market cap. There is some overlap with the Russell 3000 Index, but many are too small to meet the criteria of the Russell 3000 Index.

The company might not be on the Microcap list for long. The company has been under pressure by activist shareholders and CEO Mark Gross has been making changes including moving to a holding company structure that provides some tax advantages but also opens more opportunities for the wholesale and retail segments.

Beth Lilly, owner of Crocus Hill Partners, a St. Paul-based value investment firm that focuses on small and micro-cap companies, has invested in Supervalu and thinks Gross is making changes that will unlock more value for shareholders.

"Mark Gross quietly has gone about taking all these steps to take a business that was not very well managed in the past and is doing a good job managing it better, taking out costs and surfacing its value," Lilly said. "We believe that there is still a lot of value in Supervalu and that over time that value is going to resurface… there is more to come."

Supervalu shares are trading around $21.26, still down 1.7 percent year-to-date but up from its 52-week low of $13.60 per share on Feb. 22.

There are positives to being associated with the Microcap Index. So far in 2018 the Russell Microcap Index is up 11.3 percent, better than the 2.0 percent increase of the Russell 3000 Index, and the Russell 2000 index which is up 7.7 percent.