Wilmington warehouse robotics company Symbotic appears to have put its stock price on an automated track, climbing ever higher.
Shares of Symbotic hit an all-time high of $48.62 on Wednesday, up from $11.94 at the start of the year and giving the company a stock market value of almost $27 billion. That’s more than any other tech company in the state except Analog Devices, which has a market cap of $97 billion. Symbotic shares finished the day at $48.17.
Investors and analysts have been impressed by Symbotic’s rapid revenue growth — sales jumped 173 percent in the first half of the company’s fiscal year to $473 million — and a $12 billion backlog of orders. Symbotic went public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, one year ago.
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The latest surge in Symbotic’s stock — a doubling in price over the past month — happened after chief executive Rick Cohen hosted an investor day in Florida on May 18.
“The vision for Symbotic is to be the best automation company in the world, number one, but number two is to move every box in the world,” Cohen said at the event. “I can’t think of any other vision that suits how big an opportunity this is.”
The presentations for investors and analysts included a visit to a Walmart distribution center in Brooksville, Fla., that had Symbotic’s automated warehouse sorting and picking system running. Walmart is Symbotic’s leading customer for its robots, with contracts to add the system in all 42 of its US regional distribution centers.
“We came away from the Walmart tour and investor day more optimistic about the runway for growth both over the near term and longer term,” analyst James Ricchiuti at Needham & Co. wrote after the event. “Symbotic appears to be balancing the need to move faster to expand its customer base and market verticals with a commitment to driving profitability. We like what we heard on both scores.”
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Excluding certain costs like stock-based compensation, Symbotic is approaching profitability on a cash-flow basis, with an adjusted loss of $28 million in the first half.
So far, Wall Street is unconcerned about Symbotic’s dependence on Walmart. The world’s largest retailer was responsible for almost 90 percent of Symbotic’s revenue this year and a similar share of its order backlog. Still, that percentage has been declining — it was 94 percent of 2022 revenue — as Symbotic expands its business from other customers such as grocery chain Albertsons.
Cohen, the third generation in his family to run supermarket supplier C&S Wholesale Grocery, was initially an investor in Symbotic, which got started in 2007 and originally was called Casepick Systems. Cohen got increasingly involved in the robotics operation as he handed off the chief executive job at C&S and became CEO of Symbotic at the end of 2017.
Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @ampressman.