In the last five years, individual FTSE 100 stocks have given very different returns. Some have soared while others have tanked. Here I will zoom in on the five worst performers during this period. Are there any opportunities within this stock group?

Stock price action

Before I highlight the lags, I need to point out two things.

First, I’m only going to focus on stock price action, so the earnings numbers don’t include it dividends. If I included dividends, some of these stocks probably wouldn’t make the worst-performing list because earnings can make a big difference to a stock’s overall return.

Second, I only look at stocks that are currently in the FTSE 100. Some stocks have performed so poorly that they have been dropped from the index and are now in FTSE 250. Examples here include Ocado and Burberry.

The worst performers

In the table below, I’ve highlighted the worst Footsie performers of the last half decade. Luckily I only own one of them (more on this later)!

It’s an interesting mix: a low-cost airline, a telecom company, an insurer, a housebuilder and an asset manager.

All these companies have faced different challenges in the last five years. easyJet was hit hard by the pandemic and has yet to recover. Persimmon have faced lower demand for their homes since interest rates have risen. Vodafone has struggled with its debt pile in a higher interest rate environment (and cut its dividend). Caution (LSE: PRU) has been affected by the economic downturn in China. And Schroders have faced challenges as investors have moved away from actively managed mutual funds.

In retrospect, some of these challenges were relatively easy to spot. Vodafone’s debt pile, for example, was always a red flag. Others, however, were more difficult to predict. For example, at the beginning of 2020, no one expected that a global pandemic would bring the aviation industry to a standstill!

A takeaway here is that diversification is critical when building a portfolio. No matter how much research you do, there is always the potential for things to still go wrong.

Opportunities today

Now, all of these stocks could potentially recover at some point. But the one I’m bullish on (and the one I own) is Prudential. In my opinion, it has the most potential in the long run.

The reason I say this is that the insurance company is now focusing on the Asian and African markets. And these have enormous potential. In these markets there are over 5 billion people. And today, the penetration of insurance and savings products is still very low.

For example, in China, the percentage of the population that has life insurance is estimated to be less than 10%. Here in the UK it is estimated to be over 30%.

So there is a lot of room for growth. I see Prudential as much more scalable than the other companies.

Of course, the slowdown in the Chinese economy is a problem here. This results in less growth and affects sentiment towards the stock.

How long this will last is anyone’s guess. It may continue for a while. However, with a five-to-10-year perspective, I think the Chinese economy will be fine. That’s why I’m hanging on to my Prudential shares.