What if you bought Ahold in 2000?
World · Netherlands. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.2× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Ahold at the start of 2000 would be worth about $1,167 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Ahold, the Dutch owner of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain, spent the 1990s buying its way across the United States and beyond, collecting chains like Stop & Shop and Giant and becoming one of the world's largest food retailers. Its growth was much admired. In February 2003 it admitted that its US Foodservice subsidiary had significantly overstated profits, chiefly through promotional allowances from suppliers. The CEO and CFO resigned, the shares collapsed, and Ahold became known as Europe's Enron.
The company survived by selling assets, raising capital and shrinking to focus on supermarkets in the Netherlands and on the US East Coast. Recovery was slow but steady. In 2016 it merged with Belgium's Delhaize, owner of the Food Lion chain, to form Ahold Delhaize. Today it is a dull, profitable grocer with an expanding online business. From its 2000 peak, it took the shares more than two decades to recover, but someone who bought near the bottom in 2005 earned several times their money.
The lesson: After an accounting scandal, the moment of maximum pessimism can be a bargain, provided the core business is sound and the company survives the cleanup.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $30.00 | $1,167 | $4,626 | 1.2× |
| 2003 | $12.00 | $2,917 | $7,727 | 2.9× |
| 2005 | $6.00 | $5,833 | $5,763 | 5.8× |
| 2007 | $8.00 | $4,375 | $4,789 | 4.4× |
| 2008 | $9.00 | $3,889 | $4,626 | 3.9× |
| 2010 | $9.00 | $3,889 | $6,071 | 3.9× |
| 2012 | $10.00 | $3,500 | $5,312 | 3.5× |
| 2015 | $15.00 | $2,333 | $3,301 | 2.3× |
| 2018 | $18.00 | $1,944 | $2,519 | 1.9× |
| 2020 | $23.00 | $1,522 | $2,092 | 1.5× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2005, turning $1,000 into $5,833. The S&P 500 from that same year: $5,763.
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. Ahold is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in World
- What if you bought ASML?
- What if you bought Shell?
- What if you bought Philips?
- What if you bought Unilever?
- What if you bought KPN?
- What if you bought ING?