What if you bought Abbott in 2000?
US Health · Devices. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play10.8× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Abbott at the start of 2000 would be worth about $10,833 today — 10.8 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Abbott Laboratories is a Chicago healthcare conglomerate that has repeatedly reinvented itself through acquisitions and spin-offs. In 2004 it spun off the hospital products business Hospira, and in 2013 it separated its research pharmaceutical arm as AbbVie, taking the blockbuster Humira with it. Many expected the remaining Abbott, selling diagnostics, devices, nutrition and generic drugs in emerging markets, to be the duller half.
Instead, it became a steady compounder. The 2017 acquisitions of St. Jude Medical in heart devices and Alere in diagnostics bolstered the device business, and the FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor became one of medtech's great growth products. During the pandemic Abbott sold enormous numbers of rapid Covid tests, including the BinaxNOW home test. It also had a serious setback: in 2022 contamination concerns and a recall at its infant formula plant in Michigan contributed to a nationwide formula shortage, followed by lawsuits over formula for premature infants. Despite that, a buyer from 2000 multiplied their money roughly tenfold, and that excludes the value of the AbbVie shares spun off along the way.
The lesson: Spin-offs can unlock value on both sides, so judging a company only by its current share price can miss pieces that shareholders received along the way.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $12.00 | $10,833 | $4,626 | 10.8× |
| 2003 | $17.00 | $7,647 | $7,727 | 7.6× |
| 2005 | $23.00 | $5,652 | $5,763 | 5.7× |
| 2007 | $24.00 | $5,417 | $4,789 | 5.4× |
| 2008 | $28.00 | $4,643 | $4,626 | 4.6× |
| 2010 | $27.00 | $4,815 | $6,071 | 4.8× |
| 2012 | $28.00 | $4,643 | $5,312 | 4.6× |
| 2015 | $45.00 | $2,889 | $3,301 | 2.9× |
| 2018 | $57.00 | $2,281 | $2,519 | 2.3× |
| 2020 | $87.00 | $1,494 | $2,092 | 1.5× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2000, turning $1,000 into $10,833. The S&P 500 from that same year: $4,626.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Abbott is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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