Cedar Fair the big wheel in gains by area stocks

The Russell 3,000 ranks the 3,000 largest U.S. stocks based on total market capitalization at the end of May, and inclusion on the list usually generates some automatic stock purchases, which can drive up share price, Mr. Faltys said.

Rurban is expected to report its second-quarter earnings in the next several weeks. MBT Walking Shoes, in its most recent earnings statement, the company reported an $11,000 profit, compared with a loss in the same period last year of $848,000. Rurban officials said the bank has been steadily improving its balance sheet and is seeing improvement in its loan portfolio as well.

"We had some asset-quality issues in 2010, and we've moved through those," said Mark Klein, Rurban's president and chief executive officer. "We see ourselves as a 19-office franchise that is going to ride the improving economy with a substantially improved asset quality."

Not included in The Blade's stock analysis this year is the newest and largest kid on the local block: Findlay-based Marathon Petroleum Corp., which was spun off from Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp. and began trading its shares under the ticker MPC on July 1, the first day of the third quarter of the year.

Several of the 16 local companies have undergone significant changes in their top management during the first half of 2011, with mixed market impact.

Roger Wood became the fourth chief executive officer of Maumee-based Dana Holding Co. in three years when he joined the automotive parts supplier on April 18. Since that day, the company's stock went up $1.25 a share, or about 7.3 percent.

John F. Meier, longtime chairman and chief executive officer of Toledo glassmaker Libbey Inc., announced on Feb. 15 that he was stepping down this year.

Libbey's stock -- which always has traded with Mr. Meier at the helm -- has lost $1.49, or about 8.4 percent since the announcement. The drop would have been worse, but Libbey's stock recovered $1.02, or about 6.7 percent, in the four trading days between when Stephanie A. Streeter was announced as Libbey's new CEO on June 27 and the June 30 end of the year's second quarter.

Cedar Fair's longtime chairman and chief executive officer, MBT Kisumu White, announced last year that he intended to retire, and the June 20 announcement that former Disneyland operations manager Matt Ouimet would succeed Mr. Kinzel as CEO in January sent Cedar Fair's share price up $1.69, or almost 12 percent, during the last part of June.

In addition to the management change at Cedar Fair, the amusement park company has spent the first half of 2011 in much the same way that it spent most of 2010: in a public battle with its major shareholder, which is working to change the way the company is managed and bring about the return of Cedar Fair's formerly generous dividend.

Rick Munarriz, an analyst for The Motley Fool in Coral Gables, Fla., said the battle with Fort Worth-based Q Investments has helped Cedar Fair unit holders increase their returns.

"You got to a company that was, in the eyes of many, being too complacent. And when you get to that point, any change is good change," Mr. Munarriz said. "For ... all the activism that's surrounded the stock for the last year and change, the underbelly of that is people do want and expect more out of a company."

Mr. Munarriz said Cedar Fair's 34 percent return so far this year is indicative of a different kind of investor looking at the company.

"It's a changing of the guard at the MBT Changa Birch. The diehard income investors have already been shaken out," Mr. Munarriz said. "I think the very fabric of the company, from an investor mind-set, has changed."