Caffeine has become a staple of the modern-day working scene. Millions of people around the world wake up to a cup of caffeine. Later in the day, they hit their local corner store for an energy drink and maybe even some pre-workout before the gym.
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While the top performers in the U.S. stock market over the past quarter-century encompass some of the biggest agents of social change and creators of groundbreaking technology. But
nothing has outperformed a straightforward, caffeine-powered energy source popular among teenagers, travelers, and weary parents.
Many might expect Apple Inc. or Amazon.com, Inc. to be leading the charge after their rise to trillion-dollar titans. Instead, Monster Beverage Corp. (NASDAQ:MNST), which began as a humble juice manufacturer leads the pack among the 338 S&P 500 Index constituents continuously traded over the past 25 years since 1988.
According to S&P Global, these two behemoths recorded average annualized returns of ‘only’ 33.2% and 26.2%, respectively. While commendable, these figures would have yielded 25-year returns of $13,008.59 and $3,346.07 on an identical $10 investment.
Monster persisted, boasting an average annualized return of 37.1%. Its cumulative return over this period means that a $10 investment on January 1, 1998, would have grown to $26,888.24 by December 31, 2022.
After Amazon, a number of other unlikely candidates lead the pack Tractor Supply Co. (NASDAQ:TSCO) came in fourth with a 28,198% return, or 25.3% annualized. And the logistics company Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL).
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Monster's Rise to the Top
The company, which was initially founded in 1935 under the name Hansen Juices leveraged the successful 2002 launch of Monster Energy to fuel its extraordinary success.
By that time, the company had rebranded as Hansen Natural Corp. and gone public in 1990, yet only had $54 million in annual revenue when its market-topping 25-year streak began in 1998.
Today, its annual revenue has increased more than a hundredfold, and its market value is a thousand times greater.
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Monster’s rise to the top might be unexpected for some. The company isn’t a flashy tech company, but it’s obvious there are still massive amounts of money to be made. In the startups market, companies like Pureboost have already seen significant traction as well likely realizing the potential upside in the market. Pureboost is currently raising on Wefunder, which means anyone can invest for a limited time, to help scale its ‘clean energy drink mix.’
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