Hindsight
Investments

Ashtead Group (AHT) is a multi-national equipment provider that offers rentals for construction, facilities, disaster relief, major events, climate control and traffic management. It operates as 'Sunbelt' in the US and Canada, and 'A-Plant' in the UK.

While its business model is very simple - the company buys equipment, rents it to clients on a short-term basis, and eventually sells it on the secondary market - it has outperformed all the other companies in the FTSE 100 over the last 10 years. Its shares rose from 81.5p to £22.71 between 28 August 2009 and 30 August 2019, and paid out dividends totalling 166.5p per share. The total return would have been 3238% if dividends had been reinvested.

With solid fundamentals, the outlook for the company remains very positive. It is on target to exceed $5 billion in revenue globally by 2021, and achieve market share of 15% in the US, 5% in Canada and more than 8% in the UK over the next few years. However, the company's revenue depends heavily on clients in construction and industry, so anything that could affect investment in these areas - such as a global recession or hard Brexit - is likely to hit its bottom line.

JD Sports Fashion (JD) is an international retailer that owns sports, fashion and outdoor chains including JD, Size?, Kukri, Blacks and Millets. It has more than 2400 stores worldwide, with the bulk of these in the UK.

The company is one of the FTSE 100's more surprising success stories of the last 10 years, flourishing at a time when the retail sector as a whole has struggled as a result of stiff online competition. Its shares rose from 26p to £6.17 between 28 August 2009 and 30 August 2019, and paid out dividends totalling 139p per share. The total return would have been 2712%, assuming dividends had been reinvested.

The company owes this success to the 'athleisure' fashion trend, diversification into online channels, expansion into Asia, and acquisitions including Finish Line in the US and Blacks in the UK. The outlook for the future looks positive too - it recently launched its JD retail brand in the US and plans to expand this and its Asian offering over time. However, success will depend on how well these operations are received in the respective territories, as well as its ability to weather rises in business rates and minimum wages over the next few years.

Melrose Industries (MRO) is an investment firm with a business model that's best described by its motto 'buy, improve, sell'.* That's because it specialises in purchasing manufacturing and engineering businesses, which it aims to develop and sell on for profit.

Melrose issued 'rights' - giving existing shareholders the opportunity to buy new shares at a discount - twice in the last ten years, using the money raised to fund acquisitions of Elster and Nortek. It also consolidated shares four times, reducing the number in circulation, in order to return capital to shareholders. Investors would have seen returns of 1261% between 28 August 2009 and 30 August 2019, assuming they bought the shares offered to them in the rights issues and reinvested their dividends. This made Melrose the FTSE 100's third best performing firm of the last ten years.

Its recent success is down to the acquisition and sale of companies including Dynacast and McKechnie Plastic Components. However, whether or not it can replicate these successes in the years to come will depend on its ability to turnaround more recent acquisitions in the same way.

* Source: Melrose (2019).

Halma (HLMA) is a group of technology companies that aims to produce "a safer, cleaner, healthier future for everyone, every day".* Its companies are split into four divisions - process safety, infrastructure safety, environmental and analysis, and medical - which cover everything from fire suppression to patient assessment.

The company was the FTSE 100's fourth strongest performer over the last ten years, with total returns of 1101%. Its shares rose from 197p on 28 August 2009 to £19.63 on 30 August 2019, while dividends totalled 117.81p per share. The company has increased dividends by more than 5% every year for the last 40 years, highlighting the strength of its fundamentals.

Halma has proven to be successful because it chooses companies that operate within safety, health and environmental niches - areas that have long-term growth drivers such as ageing global populations and increasing regulation. However, if it is to grow at the same rate over the next ten years, it will need to remain at the forefront of emerging trends and continue its international expansion.

* Source: Halma (2019).

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) is a stock exchange and financial services company. It facilitates listings and share issues, provides information products such as indices and benchmarks, and offers post-trade services including clearing. It also sells technology for trading, market surveillance and other uses.

It is the FTSE 100's fifth best performing stock of the last ten years. The group's shares rose from £8.05 on 28 August 2009 to £69.54 on 30 August 2019. It also paid out dividends worth 353.5p per share over the course of this period, giving total returns of 1046%.

Its success is rooted in the London Stock Exchange's 2007 merger with Borsa Italiana (the Milan Stock Exchange), which is when the group as a whole was formed. Since then, the company has acquired majority stakes in MillenniumIT, FTSE International, Gatelab and Russell Indexes, among others, which have driven its expansion. While it appears poised to benefit from globalisation, growing wealth and changing investment behaviours, its future success will depend on how well it can navigate these trends.