When US President Donald Trump first targeted the Canadian auto industry with tariffs it cost Linda Hasenfratz her status as a billionaire.
The majority of Hasenfratz’ net worth is concentrated in Linamar Corp., the auto parts and industrial equipment manufacturer her father founded and she’s run for more than two decades. After the first round of tariffs was announced last year — including levies on autos specifically — Linamar’s stock plunged and her fortune dipped to around $800 million.
But now Linamar’s shares have rebounded to near record highs, and Hasenfratz’ net worth has hit $1.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. These changing fortunes may point to both a limit to Trump’s ongoing trade assault on Canada, and a potential way forward for the country’s beleaguered manufacturers.
“Tariffs are very much a short-term problem,” Hasenfratz, 60, who is Linamar’s executive chair, said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Television. “The vast majority of our business, there’s absolutely no tariff.”
Shares of the Guelph, Ontario-based company have climbed about 27% this year in Toronto — outpacing the 16% advance of the benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index — despite a one-day dip on Thursday after reporting second-quarter earnings that fell short of analysts’ estimates.
Hasenfratz didn’t respond to a request for comment about her net worth or the company’s performance.
Tariff Free
Key to Linamar’s success over the last year has been that auto parts are exempt from the 25% tariff applied to assembled vehicles, so long as the parts are compliant with the existing trade deal between the US, Canada and Mexico. That means products that account for more than 60% of Linamar’s earnings are sold tariff free.
While Trump declined this year to renew that existing trade deal, it remains in place for another 10 years. The new round of 50% tariffs Trump is currently threatening against a range of other Canadian goods also leave auto parts out.
While the US administration has been explicit in its hopes to reshore Canada’s vehicle assembly plants, doing the same with Canada’s much bigger parts manufacturing industry would be costly for both US car makers and consumers.
“On the parts production side I see it very hard for that to be displaced wholesale from Canada to the US,” said Jonathan Goldman, a Bank of Nova Scotia analyst who has a hold equivalent on Linamar’s stock. “Even if somebody else did make it you can’t just go across the street and get it. You have to redesign the entire car cause it all works together.”
With the tariff threat to its business diminishing, Linamar has been able to turn the disruption to its advantage. It has made three acquisitions in recent years, two in Germany and one in the US, from companies thrown into distress by the industry’s broader upheaval. That’s added some technological capabilities to Linamar’s product portfolio, while helping boost sales to a record in the most recent quarter.
And Hasenfratz has indicated she’s open to more.
“The tariff situation is also adding stress to an already stressed supply base,” she said on a May conference call. “This is leading to acquisition opportunities for us, as you’ve seen us act on, and the pipeline of distressed companies just continues to grow.”
Dividend Payouts
Linamar was founded in 1966, a year after Canada signed an agreement with the US that removed tariffs on cars and auto parts traded between the two nations. Hasenfratz’s father, Frank, came up with the name by combining the first names of his two daughters and his wife, and the newly christened Linamar’s breakthrough contract was with Ford Motor Co.
In 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement integrated the two countries’ auto industries further and by 2002 Hasenfratz took over as chief executive officer from her father.
She expanded Linamar’s auto parts business globally while also diversifying into heavy agricultural equipment and the kind of industrial lifts used to repair wires and lighting in warehouse ceilings. These other businesses now account for nearly 40% of earnings.
While stock investors often apply a discount for this kind of diversification, Hasenfratz has maintained it makes Linamar’s cash flows more stable because weakness in one industry can be offset by strength in another. And she and her family have benefited from that stability in the steady dividend payouts they’ve collected for decades, amounting to millions of dollars a year. The accumulated dividends now account for about 13% of Hasenfratz and her family’s net worth, according to Bloomberg calculations.
While Linamar’s agricultural equipment business is currently suffering from a downturn, its industrial lift sales are booming. The narrower, battery-powered rigs Linamar makes have become favored by builders of artificial intelligence data centers in the US, giving the company’s investors indirect access to the booming AI market.
The company is also exploring other areas, including defense, robotics and power generation.
“They can run a manufacturing process just about as good as anyone,” said Will Guy, an equity analyst who follows Linamar’s stock for Veritas Investment Research Group in Toronto. “They have been able to leverage that into other industries, and they have ambitions to expand that into further industries as well.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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