Lehigh Valley Stocks Have Not Thrived in 2025, With PPL the Only Gainer Among Four Considered

** Corrects terms of stock split that won’t happen in 12th paragraph **

Oct. 27, 2025

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Shopping at home has not worked well this year for Lehigh Valley stock pickers.

Air Products is the region’s most important company but shares (NYSE:APD) in the maker of industrial gases have been a laggard for years.

OraSure has dipped below $3, while PPL Corp. is the only year-to-date winner. Even Shift4 is down for 2025.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is up a little more than 16% for the year, based on total return.

PPL (NYSE:PPL) ended 2024 at $31.70, with a closing price Friday of $37.35, up 18%. The utility company also has paid about 82 cents in dividends to date in 2025, with one more on the way in December.

The Allentown-based electricity and natural gas supplier may benefit from a predicted boom in data centers and Artificial Intelligence. Meanwhile, its PPL Electric Utilities division is seeking to raise rates on electricity delivery.

PPL has a market capitalization (share price times number of shares outstanding) of $27.6 billion, so it’s a big deal and what it does is essential to the health of the regional economy.

Air Products has a market capitalization of $56.7 billion, or slightly more than twice that of PPL. It employs thousands of people around the world.

Earlier this year, activist investors including Mantle Ridge pushed out Chief Executive Seifi Ghasemi, replacing him with Eduardo Menezes.

A share price of as high as $425 was forecast during the boardroom battle, along with plans to shift the company’s focus to its main businesses and invest less in clean energy. That included a write-off of about $3 billion for abandoned projects.

Air Products shares ended 2024 at $282.83, and the closing price Friday was $254.91, down 9% to date. The company has paid $7.14 in dividends in 2025. Air Products has prided itself on annual dividend increases. We will see if that continues under the new management of the Upper Macungie Township-based company.

As for the projected $425 share value, not even close. This is not a serious projection, but the only way to get near that would be a reverse 3-for-2 split. Even then the price would only be about $381.

Shift4 (NYSE:FOUR) continues to make news with deals and executive changes, but the stock has not flourished.

The Upper Saucon Township-based payment processor ended 2024 at $103.78, with a closing price Friday of $76.26. The company, which handles credit-card payments at hotels, restaurants, stadiums and other venues, pays no dividend.

During 2025, founder Jared Isaacman stepped down as CEO, with President Taylor Lauber stepping up to the top job. Chief Financial Officer Nancy Disman announced her retirement, although she remains an adviser. Isaacman is now executive chairman of the company he founded at age 16.

Isaacman, a two-time astronaut aboard SpaceX missions, may yet become head of NASA.

Shift4 has announced multiple deals this year, but as of Friday, its share price was down 27%. The company has periodically been a topic of acquisition speculation, fueled at one time by Shift4’s seeking bids. That time, Isaacman said not enough was offered.

Shift4’s mantra is profitable growth: it makes deals to add profit, not just gain market share.

As of Friday, Shift4’s market capitalization was $6.7 billion, down from around $10 billion at its peak.

The last Lehigh Valley company to consider is OraSure (NASDAQ:OSUR). This small ($217 million market capitalization) maker of medical diagnostic kits and specimen-collection equipment has been having bad years for a long time.

The stock has popped a bit on reports of a potential acquisition, but OraSure ended 2024 at $3.61 per share. On Friday, it was down to $2.96, a year-to-date drop of 18%. Revenue has been falling, and no amount of happy talk on earnings calls can refute that.

Perhaps the Lehigh Valley needs its own stock index, but Air Products would dominate such a measure based on its size and market price.

So look at it this way: If an investor had put $1,000 into each of the four companies above at the end of 2024 for $4,000 total, how would they have done?

The $1,000 in Air Products, with dividends, would be worth about $908; little OraSure would have dropped to $819, and Shift4 would have cost the buyer $265, with a value Friday of just $735.

The $1,000 in PPL would with dividends be worth $1,179.

The net: start with $4,000, as of Oct. 24, turn that into $3,641 for a drop of about 9%.

To be continued at the end of 2025. Perhaps we will see a big finish.

Note, I’ve picked four Lehigh Valley-based companies. There are local banks I’ve omitted, and some big employers (Wal-Mart and McDonald’s franchises have lots of local workers) but I’m looking for traded companies based in Lehigh and Northampton counties.

— Disclosure: I own shares in Air Products (one of the worst investments I ever made), PPL and Shift4. I periodically buy enough shares in OraSure to pay for a pizza if it goes up a little. So far, I’m one of the few who can say I’ve made money in the little south Bethlehem-based company, but my luck is bound to run out.