Knife River Stock Has Tumbled 31% This Past Year, but One Fund Placed a $22 Million Bet on a Turnaround

1 week ago 4

Jonathan Ponciano, The Motley Fool

Thu, January 29, 2026 astatine 5:47 AM CST 4 min read

On January 28, Paradice Investment Management disclosed a caller presumption successful Knife River (NYSE:KNF), acquiring 312,743 shares successful the 4th fourth successful a commercialized valued astatine $22.00 cardinal fixed quarter-end prices.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing dated January 28, Paradice Investment Management established a caller involvement successful Knife River, purchasing 312,743 shares during the 4th quarter. The post-trade presumption was valued astatine $22.00 cardinal astatine 4th end, reflecting some the acquisition and banal terms movement.

This caller holding represented 4.28% of Paradice’s 13F reportable assets astatine the extremity of December.

Top 5 holdings aft the filing:

NYSE:GMED: $46.10 cardinal (9.0% of AUM)
NASDAQ:TNDM: $45.67 cardinal (8.9% of AUM)
NYSE:NVST: $37.11 cardinal (7.2% of AUM)
NYSE:LEA: $36.86 cardinal (7.2% of AUM)
NYSE:FLS: $35.84 cardinal (7.0% of AUM)

As of January 27, Knife River shares were priced astatine $68.59, down 31.4% implicit the past twelvemonth and vastly underperforming the S&P 500 by 47.46 percent points.

Metric

Value

Revenue (TTM)	$3.05 billion
Net income (TTM)	$148.32 million
Market capitalization	$3.91 billion
Price (as of January 27)	$68.59

Knife River provides aggregates-based operation materials, including crushed stone, sand, gravel, asphalt, and ready-mix concrete, and offers contracting services for heavy-civil operation projects.
The institution generates gross by extracting, processing, and selling operation aggregates and related materials, arsenic good arsenic by delivering infrastructure contracting services specified arsenic paving and tract development.
Primary customers see federal, state, and municipal governments, with a absorption connected nationalist infrastructure projects specified arsenic highways, bridges, airports, and nationalist buildings.

Knife River is simply a starring U.S. supplier of operation materials and contracting services, with a diversified beingness crossed aggregate regions. The institution leverages vertical integration successful aggregates, asphalt, and ready-mix factual to service large-scale infrastructure and nationalist works projects. Its established marketplace presumption and wide lawsuit basal enactment unchangeable gross streams and operational standard successful the operation materials sector.

This determination matters due to the fact that it reflects a wide rotation toward assets with disposable request and pricing powerfulness alternatively than vulnerability tied to longer-cycle concern uncertainty. After afloat exiting 1 concern holding (Chart Industries), Paradice redeployed superior into a concern wherever net are progressively driven by backlog, nationalist funding, and caller acquisitions that are already showing up successful results.

Knife River’s latest 4th helps explicate the appeal. Revenue roseate 9% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to $1.2 billion, portion adjusted EBITDA climbed 11% to $272.8 million, driven successful portion by acquired operations and pricing subject crossed aggregates and ready-mix. Most notable is backlog, which reached a grounds $995 million, up 32% from a twelvemonth earlier, with 87% tied to nationalist enactment and much than three-quarters expected to person to gross wrong 12 months.

The institution besides continues to put aggressively, spending $528 cardinal connected acquisitions successful the archetypal 9 months of the year, portion maintaining nett leverage astir 2.6 times adjusted EBITDA and targeting further betterment by year's end. Compared with Paradice’s different holdings, this presumption adds vulnerability to infrastructure spending with nearer-term currency travel support.