Brunswick Corporation engages in the manufacture and sale of boats, marine engines, fitness equipment, and bowling and billiards products in the United States and internationally. The company's Boat segment offers fiberglass pleasure boats, luxury sportfishing convertibles and motoryachts, high-performance boats, offshore fishing boats, sport yachts, cruisers, and runabouts, as well as aluminum fishing, pontoon, and deck boats. It also manufactures and distributes marine parts and accessories; and develops management systems for dealers of marine products and recreational vehicles. Brunswick's Marine Engine segment provides a range of sterndrive engines, inboard engines, outboard engines, and water jet propulsion systems. It also offers parts and accessories, such as marine electronics and control integration systems, steering systems, instruments, controls, propellers, trolling motors, service aids, and marine lubricants, as well as sterngear for inboard-powered vessels. The company's Fitness segment offers a line of cardiovascular fitness equipment, including treadmills, body cross trainers, stair climbers, stationary exercise bicycles, and strength-training equipment. It offers its products to health clubs, the military, governmental agencies, corporations, hotels, schools, and universities. Brunswick's Bowling and Billiards segment provides a range of bowling products, including bowling balls and bowling pins, bowling lanes and related equipment, automatic pinsetters, ball returns, furniture units, and scoring and center management systems. It also offers an array of bowling consumer products that include bowling shoes, bags, and accessories, as well as a line of consumer and commercial billiards tables, air Hockey table games, foosball tables, and related accessories. The company sells its products primarily through distributors, dealers, and retailers. Brunswick was founded in 1844 and is headquartered in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Discretionary Industry Analysis

WikiWealth.com Industry Description: the consumer discretionary industry refers to products and services bought with discretionary (normal expenses) income. The Consumer discretionary sector encompasses industries that tend to be the most sensitive to economic cycles and stock market swings. Its manufacturing segment includes automotive, household durable goods, textiles & apparel and leisure equipment. The services segment includes hotels, restaurants and other leisure facilities, media production and services and consumer retailing. Read More. Also see the Industry Analysis Home Page.

WikiWealth.com Industry Analysis: During economic recessions, consumers tend to cut back on discretionary expenses to save money during those tough economic times. Less spending by consumers eventually decreases business revenue and stock prices. During economic recoveries, consumers have more discretionary income, so spending quickly increases. Higher spending increases business revenue and eventually increases stock prices. During long economic expansions, discretionary income increase, but at a slower pace than during the initial economic recovery stage.

¹ Investment potential (margin of safety) is a weighted average of the discounted cash flow analysis (DCF), the enterprise value (EV) market multiple analysis, and the Warren Buffett investment analysis. WikiWealth obtains 80% of their quantitative investment potential from fundamental investment analysis.
² The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) analysis for the industry is a broad representation of the WACC for each individual company. A sub-industry WACC analysis offers both stability and accuracy for each individual company.

WikiWealth.com Industry Profit Analysis: The best way to profit from discretionary stock investments is to find the most undervalued investments (Wall Street and Main Street buy ratings) during economic recessions. Those investments should be undervalued (see Wall Street Analysis on left side), and have high Main Street Common Sense investment ratings (see Main Street Analysis on right side). When an economic recovery occurs, discretionary stocks tend to outperform the general stock market, because consumers quickly resume spending on items they wanted, but resisted buying during tougher economic times. Eventually those investments become overvalued, because profits and stock prices increase past their fair values. In other words, the margin of safety becomes low or negative. During the last stages of an economic business cycle, just before a recession, it is best to sell discretionary stocks, because they are likely to decrease in price the fastest. Selling an stock investment is difficult do properly. Expensive (overvalued) stocks with low Main Street Common Sense ratings should be sold at any time to invest in better stocks. Two buys ratings are the best and two sell ratings are the worst possible stock investments. As a general rule, the larger the investment potential (margin of safety), the safer the investment. For more information on stock research ratings click here.

Investment Moats

Investment Moats are fundamental investing theories developed by Warren Buffett and adapted to the SWOT analysis. Investment moats are general characteristics that separate great investments from average stock investments. The wider the investment moat the better. Read more: Investment Moats. For company-specific investment moats: SWOT Analysis.

SWOT Strengths Increase Investor Moats: Below is a list of relevant industry investment characteristics, if any exist

SWOT Weaknesses Decrease Investor Moats: Below is a list of relevant industry investment characteristics, if any exist

Stock Price Triggers

Stock Price Triggers were developed by WikiWealth.com to predict changes in stock price direction, which depend on events outside of the control of the company. In general, if SWOT opportunities are greater than SWOT threats, the stock price should raise; the opposite is also true. For more precise measures, examine each SWOT opportunity and threat, then rank them according to importance and timing. The more important the investment characteristic, the greater the impact on stock direction. The sooner a investment trigger may occur, the more influence it will have on stock price direction. Read more: Stock Price Triggers. For company-specific stock price triggers: SWOT Analysis.

SWOT Opportunities are Positive Stock Price Triggers: Below is a list of relevant industry investment characteristics, if any exist.

SWOT Threats are Negative Stock Price Triggers: Below is a list of relevant industry investment characteristics, if any exist.

Long Company Description (help)

The Brunswick Corporation NYSE: BC, formerly known as the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, is a United States-based corporation that has been involved in manufacturing a wide variety of products since 1845. Brunswick's global headquarters is in the Northern Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois. In 2007, it had sales of $5.671 billion with net earnings of $111.6 million

History

Brunswick was founded by John Moses Brunswick who came to the United States from Switzerland at the age of 15. The J.M. Brunswick Manufacturing Company opened for business on September 15, 1845, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Originally J.M. Brunswick intended his company to be mainly in the business of making carriages, but soon after opening his machine shop, he became fascinated with billiards and decided that making billiard tables would be more lucrative, as the better tables then in use in America were imported from England. Brunswick billiard tables were a commercial success, and the business expanded and opened up the first of what would become many branch offices in Chicago, Illinois in 1848.
In 1873, the Brunswick company merged with competitor Great Western Billiard Manufactory owned by Julius Balke to become the Brunswick & Balke Company, incorporated with a capital stock of $275,000. In 1884, another competitor, H.W. Collender Company of New York, was absorbed to form the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company with a capital of $1.5 million.
The company expanded into making a number of other products. Large ornate neo-classical style bars for saloons were a popular product. Bowling balls, pins, and equipment led a growing line of sporting equipment. It popularized bowling balls of manufactured materials, vulcanized rubber at first; earlier bowling balls had been solid wood.
In the early 20th century, Brunswick expanded the product line to include such diverse products as toilet seats, automobile tires, and phonographs. In the late 1910s, they introduced a quickly popular line of disc phonograph records; see: Brunswick Records. In the 1930s, Brunswick sold the control of the record company to Warner Brothers and came out with a line of refrigerators.
During World War II, Brunswick-Balke-Collender made small target-drone aircraft for the U.S. military.

Bowling alley automatic pinsetter, US patent 2973204
After the war, Brunswick introduced a line of school furniture. In the 1950s, the Brunswick Mechanical Pinsetter automated resetting bowling alley pins. The decade also saw the introduction of a line of golfing equipment.
The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company officially changed its name to the Brunswick Corporation on April 10, 1960. The following year the company reported sales of $422 million.

"Snurfer" a Snowboard predecessor, US patent 3378274
In the 1980s, Brunswick became a major maker of yachts and pleasure boats, whose brands include Bayliner, Boston Whaler, Maxum, Sea Ray, and Trophy.
During the Gulf War, Brunswick supplied the military with camouflage nets. They also made radomes for the Patriot missile.

SWOT Analysis

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