It was a grim week for the share value Minnesota's pubic companies, but three Minnesota companies bucked the trend with stellar gains.
The week started with Supervalu, a public company since 1967, being delisted because of the $2.9 billion acquisition by United Natural Foods.
And on Thursday Reuters reported rumors that one of Minnesota's youngest public companies, Eagan-based ConvergeOne Holdings Inc., was attracting takeover interest. ConvergeOne went public in February through a merger with a special purpose acquisition corporation. The company provides networking and collaboration products from technology companies.
Supervalu's delisting further narrowed the number of Minnesota-based public companies that trade on a major stock exchange. Once more than 200 public companies called Minnesota home, now its home to less than 75. And if we weren't't so generous on the definition of Minnesota-based (see Medtronic, Pentair, nVent, Stratasys) there would be less than 70 to claim.
On Wednesday major stock indices suffered big losses and after a modest recovery on Thursday were down again Friday as major stock indexes, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite index, fell into correction territory.
For the week about 3/4ths of the public companies lost ground. ASV Holdings Inc. (ticker symbol ASV) the Grand Rapids-based maker of compact track loaders and wheeled skid steer loaders continues to dig a hole for its shares. The second-biggest loser of the week slid 18.8 percent and shares finished at t a 52 week low of $3.24 per share.
Shares of Famous Dave's, the casual-themed barbeque restaurant, were trading around $6.40 per share the last four months but shares soured this week and dropped 18.9 percent, the worst performance of the week for a Minnesota public company. Shares of DAVE closed Friday at $5.135 per share after a small rally.
Bright spots were Minneapolis-based Sleep Number Corp. and SPS Commerce and Golden Valley-based CyberOptics Corp. Each reported strong third quarter financial results this week.
Sleep Number (SNBR) got a big boost on Wednesday when they reported third quarter results and highlighted a big boost in orders over the last seven weeks of the quarter after it had completed its transition to selling all 360 Smart Beds in its stores. It finished the week up more than 7 percent.
SPS Commerce (SPSC) beat earnings and revenue estimates for their third quarter and stock rose 12.6 percent on Friday carrying shares to second best weekly performance among Minnesota-stocks, up 17.2 percent
CyperOptics Corp. (CYBE) was the local winner for the week with shares up 19.6 percent. The maker of high-precision sensor products that are used to make computer chips, on Wednesday reported a 41 percent jump in third-quarter sales and a 43 percent increase in its order backlog.
