Last year was a boom year for Charlotte companies on the stock market. It was so good, in fact, that CNBC recently published an article naming the city “king of the stock market in 2025.” For more, Ashley Fahey of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: What were some of the stock highlights of some of Charlotte’s notable public companies?
Ashley Fahey: Of 24 local stocks that we track at The Ledger, 14 were up by double-digit percentages. There could be a lot of reasons. Many of the ones at the top of the list are in manufacturing and financial services, which, as sectors did, I would say, pretty well overall in 2025, whether it's because of regulatory shifts or some of the tariff changes, which may be benefiting some manufacturers. Definitely leading the pack was CommScope, which was based in Catawba County until November. Also, stocks of Charlotte-based banks and ones with big presence here like Wells Fargo, Ally, Bank of America and Truist, also outperformed, I would say, in 2025.
Terry: On the opposite end of the spectrum is Sycamore Brewing, which is still dealing with the fallout from the arrest last month of its co-founder on charges of sex crimes involving a 13-year-old. The Ledger obtained the latest sales figures for the brewery. So how bad is it?
Fahey: Before the arrest of co-founder Justin Brigham, sales for Sycamore were pretty much flat year over year for comparison. Following the arrest on Dec. 11, sales of Sycamore products fell by 43% in the week of Dec. 8 and then 85% the week starting Dec. 15. We can't really tell from the data whether that's retail sales or taproom sales, but as we all know, the taproom has closed indefinitely as of Monday. We know that even before that, there has just been a lot fewer people there. Many grocery stores have pulled Sycamore products off their shelves, which would impact retail sales as well as at bars and bottle shops and the like. So 85% year over year in the week of December 15th, which is, again, pretty substantial.
Terry: Let’s move over to real estate now. The Ledger this week reported there’s a glut of townhouses in Charlotte that’s outpacing buyers. Townhouses were all the rage a few years ago, and I thought the city was growing so fast there wasn’t enough housing to keep up?
Fahey: It’s a very interesting phenomenon because I think most of us, when we drive around Charlotte, we probably see some amount of townhouse construction, whether they're newly on the market or ones being built. But we may actually just have a glut.
The median sales price of the townhouse in Mecklenburg County was actually down from year over year, a drop of 1.3%. Townhouses are sitting on the market for longer now. A lot of the realtors who spoke with The Ledger say there's probably too many.
There's also more broadly in the housing market a little bit of a disconnect between what sellers think they can achieve — they're thinking the real estate market of a couple of years ago — and what buyers think the market is at. One real estate agent said sellers still think it's 2021 and buyers think we're in 2008. We're probably not in either situation, but I think that's causing some pricing disconnect. I would anticipate in 2026, we might start to see a little bit of an equilibrium. I expect some builders might pull back on some of the townhouse building, but for now, we are just seeing a lot of this inventory just sitting on the market.
Terry: And finally, if you're flying this year, some good news. American Airlines is adding free high-speed Wi-Fi to all its flights. So does this mean the end of just unplugging and reading the in-flight magazine?
Fahey: Maybe if you are an AAdvantage member, because that's who they are offering the free high-speed Wi-Fi to. Starting this month, American will be rolling out access to free high-speed Wi-Fi to those members across the carrier's narrowbody and dual-class regional fleets. They say by early spring, it expects that most of its flights will have that free Wi-Fi. It's something the airline has talked about before, but we're finally actually starting to see this roll out.
