SPECIAL REPORT - JUNE 2000
by Claude Hammond

Kentucky's Top Publicly-Held Companies
The Lane Report's Blue Chip Stocks contrast and compare company performances

ONE gets a good idea of what Kentuckians are like by taking a look at the Commonwealth’s top publicly-held companies. There are the traditional industries that one generally associates with the Bluegrass State: Distilling giant Brown Forman Corp. (NYSE: BFB) and horse racing legend Churchill Downs (Nasdaq: CHDN) are both consistent and prominent members of the list. Among Kentucky Blue Chip Companies, perhaps these two represent those Bluegrass traditions that are best-recognized.

But Kentuckians aren’t stuck in the past. The enthusiasm for and growth of technology stocks has certainly affected this state’s business climate. Computer printer manufacturer Lexmark (NYSE: LXK) leads several categories on this year’s list with Pomeroy Computer Resources (Nasdaq: PMRY), among others, doing quite well. There are energy-related stocks, with Ashland Inc. (NYSE: ASH) and petroleum piping specialist NS Group (Nasdaq: NSS) having made their mark.

Three of the Kentucky Blue Chip stocks are in the restaurant industry. Tricon Global Restaurants (NYSE: YUM), who operates the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains, is by far the largest of these. But Papa John’s (Nasdaq: PZZA) continues to grow rapidly. Tumbleweed Restaurants (OTC:TWED), who went public last year, has already made The Lane Report’s Blue Chip list – certainly not an easy task.

The industry most represented on The Lane Report’s list of Kentucky Blue Chip companies is banking (eight of 35 companies). Among the banks with great stock performance over the last five years have been Louisville’s Stock Yards Bancorp (AMEX: SYI) and Frankfort’s Farmers Capital Bank (Nasdaq: FFKT), with 145 and 103 percent increases in total return, respectively. The names of both banks invites puns. You could certainly be bullish on Stock Yards Bancorp or harvest a nice return from having invested in Farmers Capital Bank.

This year’s list of Kentucky’s Blue Chip stocks differs from past issues of The Lane Report addressing the same subject. We have tightened our criteria to list only the top 35, when we used to list the top 50. We have also added a new category of evaluation, Market Capitalization, and given a comparison of one- and five-year returns. Calculations were made in most categories to reflect stock prices at the end of April, 2000. This was done to reflect April 14th’s market correction and the subsequent rebound of stronger stocks. The exceptions to this are the Total Revenue and Return on Assets categories, where the figures were calculated for the 1999 calendar year.

This year, no composite scores were calculated for Kentucky Blue Chip Stocks. This was intentional, because a composite ranking can obscure important facts, such as profitability. All calculations were prepared for The Lane Report by Ann F. Cody, CFA, and her staff at Hilliard & Lyons in Louisville.