From $575 Million IPO to Penny Stock in Less Than a Decade: Is There Any Hope Left for This Stock at 52-Week Lows?

We’re in quite the relief rally today after President Trump and the Iranian powers that be agreed to a two-week ceasefire to hammer out a more permanent arrangement. 

The world waited with bated breath for yesterday’s 8 p.m. deadline set by the White House for Iran to make a deal to fully open the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of its civilian infrastructure. Trump posted about the news 90 minutes before the deadline. The world exhaled. As I write this on Wednesday afternoon, the S&P 500 is up 2.5%. Not sure if these gains will hold through the close.

In Tuesday trading, 130 stocks on the NYSE and the Nasdaq hit new 52-week highs, while 194 hit new 52-week lows. 

One of the names among the new 52-week lows on the NYSE was Jeld-Wen Holding (JELD), which hit a new 52-week and all-time low of $0.93. 

You turn away for a few years and the Charlotte-based window and door manufacturer goes from a $575 million IPO to a penny stock in less than a decade.

Can Jeld-Wen be saved? Maybe. Here’s why.

What in the Sam Hill Happened to the One-Time Star?

Jeld-Went went public on Jan. 26, 2017, selling 25 million shares to investors at $23 each; the shares closed their first day of trading at $26.12, up 14%. A year later, they hit an all-time high of $42.27. It’s been downhill ever since. 

The company received approximately $473 million in net proceeds from the sale of 22.27 million shares. In contrast, its private equity owner, Onex Corp. (ONEXF), sold 2.73 million shares, reducing its ownership stake to 63.4% from 83.8% before the IPO.

Jeld-Wen used the net proceeds to repay $375 million in debt, with the rest for general corporate purposes. The total debt as of Dec. 31, 2016, was $1.62 billion. By the end of Q1 2017, thanks to its IPO, total debt had fallen to $1.2 billion. Its cash and cash equivalents were $185.5 million, or about 7% of its total assets. 

In 2017, it reported $250.1 million in operating income from $3.76 billion in revenue, 2.6% higher than a year earlier. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in the eight fiscal years since, it’s been unable to match 2017’s profitability. In 2025, it had an operating loss of $416.0 million from $3.21 billion in revenue. 

Now, if you want to brighten up slightly how the financial situation looks today, its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $437.6 million in 2017, with an 11.6% margin; in 2025, it was $120.1 million with a 3.7% margin. 

Okay, maybe you can’t make things look better. 

Is Jeld-Wen the Classic Private Equity Value Destruction Story?

Onex bought a 58% stake in Jeld-Wen in August 2011 for $675 million in preferred stock. It also provided the company with a $189 million convertible note, which could be converted within 18 months into more preferred stock. It converted the notes, which brought Onex’s ownership to 83.8% by the 2017 IPO.

How much of the $864 million investment was cash, and how much was borrowed? Let’s say 40% was its own cash and that of its affiliated funds, or about $346 million. In July 2015, Jeld-Wen paid Onex $359.1 million in distributions, and another $327 million in November 2016, two months before the IPO.

By the time Jeld-Wen went public, my back-of-the-napkin calculation estimates it had already recouped its $346 million cash investment, with an additional $340 million in its pockets. 

In the IPO, it sold 2.73 million shares for net proceeds of approximately $59 million. It sold 14 million shares in May 2017 at $30.75; 12.5 million at $33.75 in November 2017; 8.0 million at $29.25 in March 2021; 10.0 million at $27.39 in May 2021; and 14.88 million at $28.50 in August 2021. By the end of 2021, Onex had sold the remaining 3.65 million shares for an undisclosed amount. 

In my estimation, Onex’s profits from the Jeld-Wen acquisition were anywhere from $1.9 billion to $2.22 billion over 10 years. 

Today, the 69.3 million shares Onex held before the 2011 IPO would be worth $69 million. 

While it chose a good time to exit Jeld-Wen -- the shares were still trading in the mid-$20s -- one can’t help but wonder if the $855 million borrowed to pay distributions to Onex and other shareholders in 2015 and 2016 didn’t accelerate the company’s demise. That’s classic private equity leverage, used to enhance returns for its investors at the expense of others.

A Possible Reason to Gamble on JELD Stock

Turtle Creek Asset Management is Jeld-Wen’s largest shareholder with a 19.26% ownership stake as of Dec. 31, 2025. 

It acquired 7.94 million shares in the company in Q3 2021 and has been adding to its position ever since. Between the end of 2024 and the end of 2025, the asset manager added 1.78 million shares, a 12% increase year-over-year. 

Naturally, the shares Turtle Creek bought in 2025 were at a much lower price than those first bought in 2021. When it bought the first tranche, Jeld-Wen was Turtle Creek’s second-largest holding among 26 stocks; today, it is the 23rd-largest among 38.  

Why is Turtle Creek still holding Jeld-Wen? 

The answer lies in its history. Founded in 1998 by Andrew Brenton, Jeffrey Cole and Jeffrey Hebel, the trio left the Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), where they launched the bank’s private equity business, to start a different kind of asset management firm. One that believes in owning the stocks of companies that are both honest and well run, a combination that’s not easy to find. 

As a value-focused investor, it not only looks for the two qualities mentioned previously, but it also wants to buy the stocks of companies that meet the criteria and are trading at a low price relative to the intrinsic value. 

This method has delivered for shareholders. 

Since its founding in 1998, it has had 135 rolling 10-year periods with annualized returns of 10-20%, while its benchmark -- a combination of Canadian stock indexes -- has had 11. Nothing speaks louder than performance. 

Recently, Jeld-Wen was named to the 2026 Most Trustworthy Companies in America list for the fifth consecutive year. It has made the list every year since Newsweek and Statista launched it in 2022. 

That covers the honest part, but is it well run? 

The U.S. construction industry is going through a challenging time. In 2025, it added just 15,000 jobs, the lowest amount since 2011 -- except the first year of COVID -- when the industry was suffering from the effects of the Great Recession. 

Jeld-Wen’s North American operations are in the middle of a turnaround that began in earnest last November when it laid off 850 people, representing about 11% of its North American and corporate employees. Given the industry's situation, the company needed to reduce its operating expenses to address current economic headwinds.

As a result of these moves, it had close to $400 million in impairment and restructuring-related charges in 2025. That created a much larger loss for the company. Add to this, lower volumes due to the slowdown, which cut margins, making profits hard to come by. 

In 2026, Jeld-Wen expects its core revenue to be down 5-10% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA of $125 million at the midpoint of its guidance, about the same as in 2025. 

While 2026 will be a year of no growth, the situation has stabilized enough that 2027 should see some growth.  

With a potential sale of its European business, the financial situation should get even stronger despite the lower volumes it’s currently experiencing. 

Can Jeld-Wen be saved? It can, but for Turtle Creek, it might be too little, too late.