How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Woodward (WWD) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to WWD for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Woodward's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Woodward's main business drivers.
Headquartered in Fort Collins, CO, Woodward, Inc is an independent designer, manufacturer and service provider of energy control and optimization solutions for the aerospace and industrial markets.
Apart from serving original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), it also engages in aftermarket repairs, replacements and other service support operations for installed products.
Woodward serves the aerospace and energy markets through two reportable segments: Aerospace and Industrial.
The Aerospace segment’s products include metering units, actuators, air valves, fuel pumps, fuel nozzles, specialty valves, , and thrust reverser actuation systems for turbine engines and nacelles, flight deck controls, actuators, servocontrols, motors, and sensors for aircraft.
These segment’s products are utilized for commercial and private aircraft and rotorcraft. These are also widely deployed on military fixed-wing aircraft and rotorcraft, guided weapons, and other defense systems. This segment generated revenues of $494 million in first-quarter fiscal 2025, representing 63.9% of total revenues.
The company faces tough competition from companies like Honeywell, Moog, Eaton, Parker Hannifin, and RTX Corporation in this space.
The Industrial segment’s products portfolio includes solenoids, actuators, valves, pumps, fuel injection systems, ignition systems, control systems, electronics and software, and sensors.
The products are widely used in steam turbines, industrial gas turbines (like heavy frame, aeroderivative and small industrial gas turbines), compressors, and reciprocating engines (like low speed, medium speed, and high-speed engines, that operate on variety of fuels). Segmental revenues of $279 million in first-quarter fiscal 2025, represented 36.1% of total revenues.
Woodward’s primary competitors in this space include Heinzmann GmbH & Co., Emerson, EControls, Hoerbiger, Meggitt, Robert Bosch AG, and Triconix.
Bottom Line
Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Woodward a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in February 2016 would be worth $8,898.41, or a gain of 789.84%, as of February 11, 2026, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500's gained 274.86% and the price of gold went up 288.38% over the same time frame.
Analysts are forecasting more upside for WWD too.
Woodward's first quarter fiscal 2026 performance gained from strength in the Aerospace segment and Core Industrial (transportation, power generation and oil & gas markets) units. In the fiscal first quarter, Aerospace benefited from strength across commercial services and defense OEM. For fiscal 2026, Woodward expects consolidated net sales to rise 14% to 18%, with Aerospace projected to grow 15% to 20% and Industrial anticipated to increase 11% to 14%. Technology upgrades and disciplined capital allocation support long-term growth. The company still expects to return between $650 million and $700 million in fiscal 2026 to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases. However, volatile China on-highway natural-gas truck market, supply-chain woes within Aerospace, global macro uncertainty and rising costs remain concerns.
The stock is up 18.61% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 2 higher, for fiscal 2026. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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Woodward, Inc. (WWD): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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