What if you bought Philips in 2000?
World · Netherlands. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0.6× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Philips at the start of 2000 would be worth about $622 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Philips, founded in Eindhoven in 1891 as a light-bulb maker, was once a sprawling electronics empire making TVs, chips, appliances and the compact cassette. At the 2000 tech peak, its shares were among the most valued in Europe, then fell by more than half in three years. Over the next two decades, management dismantled the empire: the semiconductor unit became NXP in 2006, the TV and audio businesses were handed to partners, and lighting was listed separately in 2016, later renamed Signify.
What remained was a health technology company focused on imaging, patient monitoring and personal health. Then disaster struck. In 2021 Philips recalled millions of sleep apnoea machines and ventilators because their sound-dampening foam could degrade and potentially be inhaled. The recall, a US consent decree that halted new sleep-device sales there, and costly litigation settlements wiped out most of the shares' value. The Agnelli family's holding company Exor took a stake in 2023. A buyer in 2000 is still well under water.
The lesson: Restructuring a conglomerate into a focused company only helps if the remaining business is well run, and a single product failure can erase years of strategy.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $45.00 | $622 | $4,626 | 0.6× |
| 2003 | $18.00 | $1,556 | $7,727 | 1.6× |
| 2005 | $25.00 | $1,120 | $5,763 | 1.1× |
| 2007 | $37.00 | $757 | $4,789 | 0.8× |
| 2008 | $42.00 | $667 | $4,626 | 0.7× |
| 2010 | $29.00 | $966 | $6,071 | 1.0× |
| 2012 | $20.00 | $1,400 | $5,312 | 1.4× |
| 2015 | $29.00 | $966 | $3,301 | 1.0× |
| 2018 | $38.00 | $737 | $2,519 | 0.7× |
| 2020 | $48.00 | $583 | $2,092 | 0.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $1,556. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
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. Philips is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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