Checking in with stocks once a year seems to be the right cadence because it looks past quarterly noise and lets us see meaningful change over time. With limited resources, we’re always left with difficult decisions as to which stocks we should cover. Rockwell Automation (ROK) is a stock we analyzed over three years ago in an aptly titled piece, A Leading Industrial Automation Stock. We liked what was on the tin but didn’t like that it fell into the grey area between value and growth. Revenues had stagnated for a decade, but that’s changed now.
Over the past three years, Rockwell has achieved record revenue growth that’s now crested the $9 billion mark (up from $6.3 billion last time we checked in 2020). The last three years of growth are highlighted in green below.
What has the company managed to do right, and does Rockwell represent some attractive exposure to industrial automation?
To understand how any company makes their money we can look at operating segments. In 2019, Rockwell adopted a more granular segmentation structure which – when examined over time – shows us where revenue growth is coming from.