Can Reliance Stock Repeat Its Last Five Years?

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Reliance, Inc. (RS) sells and processes metals, mostly carbon steel, aluminum and stainless steel. Before dividends, its stock has risen 201.8% since the end of September 2021. It is natural to credit the business for all of that and to expect the next five years to look the same. So how much of that rise came from Reliance’s sales growth?

How Much Did Reliance’s Sales Grow?

Over the twelve months to September 30, 2026, Reliance generated $17.4 billion in sales, compared with $12.2 billion five years earlier. That is a 41.9% rise, and management said the third quarter of 2026 brought record quarterly net sales. The growth was real, but it explains only about a third of the stock’s rise.

What Else Lifted Reliance Stock?

The margin, the multiple and the share count supplied the other two-thirds or so, though they did not all push the same way.

Most of the rise came from what investors are willing to pay. The price-to-earnings multiple, what investors pay for each dollar of profit, was 8.2 at the end of September 2021 and is 20.0 now. That higher multiple alone explains about four-fifths of the stock’s rise.

Management said on its October 22, 2026 call that Reliance has been buying back its own stock since 2021. The diluted share count fell 20.1%, which explains about a fifth of the rise. Profitability went the other way: the share of sales the company keeps as profit slipped from 9.2% to 6.4%, and that pulled the price down.

Can Margins And Multiples Rise Without End?

Not without end, unlike sales, which can keep growing for as long as Reliance sells more. Measured at quarter ends on that day’s share price, rather than today’s, Reliance’s multiple was 17.7 at the end of September 2026, against a range of 5.5 to 22.4 over the past ten years, which puts it in the upper part of that range.

The margin, at 6.4%, sits below its ten-year high of 11.3%, reached in the second quarter of 2022, but a margin cannot widen without end either. Even so, a margin climbing back toward that high would lift the price if sales, the multiple and the share count held. The multiple is a different matter. It supplied most of the gain, and from that higher level it is not a lift that repeats the way sales growth can.

What Reliance Would Need To Repeat Its Rise

If the margin, the multiple and the share count stayed where they are, Reliance would have to grow sales 24.1% a year for about five years to give the stock the same rise again. Over the past five years, it grew sales 7.3% a year.

Sales are growing much faster now. In the quarter ended September 30, 2026, they rose 42.8% from a year earlier. Management put this down to better-than-anticipated shipments and pricing, with prices up for most carbon steel products. Part of the extra volume comes from the U.S. border wall project. Management expects the first phase of the project to finish in the second quarter of 2027, and Reliance has already started taking orders for a second phase.

In the report expected in February 2027, Reliance’s sales growth from a year earlier is the figure to watch.

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