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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 14, 2021)
INSIDE: DEAR ABBY, HOROSCOPE, PUZZLES & FEATURES C1 B USINESS THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2021 bendbulletin.com/business Employee-owned businesses FOSTERING LOYALTY & PRIDE Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin ABOVE: Diana Gonzalez stock s produce while working at Newport Market in Bend on Wednesday. Gonzalez said she has been an employee with the supermarket for two years and is excited to take part in the employee stock ownership plan that she now qualifies for with the company. BELOW: Jess Jenkins straightens a display of cheese while working at Newport Avenue Market on Wednesday. Jenkins said she has been working at the supermarket for over three years and is taking part in the employee stock ownership plan. WinCo, Newport Avenue Market, among ESOPs helping workers reach retirement comfortable retirement. “We have some people already retire, at full retirement age they are fully vested,” said Lauren Johnson, chief executive of Newport Avenue Market, which has 180 employees in Bend and related stores in Terrebonne and Sisters. “It has really been a game-changer for a few of our folks ; it is pretty exciting.” The compensation is made through an employee stock ownership plan, commonly referred to as an ESOP. Company profits are funneled into the ESOP to be shared among employees based on their salary and time with the company. Unlike the sometimes volatile share price of stocks on a stock exchange like the NYSE, share prices for employee-owner stores are largely static. They change peri- odically after a review of company perfor- mance by a third-party evaluator. BY MICHAEL KOHN The Bulletin T he opening of the new WinCo store in Bend has offered more than just a new option for grocery shopping, for the 140 people working there, it’s a chance to own a slice of the company. WinCo is not the first or only employ- ee-owned store in Bend. Bi-Mart, Newport Avenue Market and Deschutes Brewery all have employee-ownership programs. But the arrival of WinCo in Central Oregon puts a spotlight on a little-known business model. What are the benefits of converting to an employee-ownership program and is it worth working for one? The benefits are pretty simple, really. It offers financial se- curity for employees who stick with the company for the long haul. The potential is there for six-figure payouts and even a See ESOPs / C7 The truth about how politicians affect the markets I t was November of 2016, and I could hear the dis- tress in the sound of her voice over the phone. “I think our new president, Mr. Trump, is going to be bad for the country, and the stock market is going to crash! How are we invested to handle that?” It wasn’t the only call like that I took around then. They reminded me of several dis- cussions, eight years prior, that sounded something like this: FACTS ON N FINANCE By William Valentine tine “I think our new president, Mr. Obama, is going to be bad for the country, and the stock market is going to crash! How are we invested to handle that?” As it happened, stocks did well under both Presidents Obama and Trump, but it’s no surprise that I’m starting to take more than a few calls about the new command- er-in- chief. Over my 33-year investing career, I don’t recall these sug- gestions not coming up when the White House changed hands or power shifted be- tween the parties in Congress. This begs the question as to how important federal politi- cians are in shaping investment returns. The answer may sur- prise you. The fact is that politics has almost no discernible effect on the markets. Full stop. In fact, I would cite this con- cern as among the most widely held, but false, assumptions among investors. At best, news of material changes in Federal policy, directly targeted at busi- nesses or tax rates, have a mar- ginal impact on stock prices, and those reactions tend to be very short-lived. Investors have been tilting at this windmill going back to the dawn of stock trading in the United States. The truth is that stock prices are driven by the future direction of earnings, which are powered by the eco- nomic cycle, independent of who is running the country. Now, this is not to say that Fiscal and Monetary policy ex- ist in a vacuum and don’t im- pact the economy. They do — but you cannot associate those changes with any one party or mix of elected representatives. Some will claim that one political party is “better” for the economy or markets than the other. Often, they cite the average-stock-returns-by-ad- ministration as support for this argument. But I was one of those weird kids that loved sta- tistics in school, and I can flatly state that we don’t have enough data points to arrive at an em- pirical conclusion as it relates to party versus market return. Forty-six presidents do not a valid-sample-set make. See Valentine / C7