Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[khemara_qc]

Qualcomm is #17 of The 2004 BusinessWeek 50

American Consumer Plays Key Role in 8th Annual BusinessWeek 50 Ranking of Top Performing U.S. Companies

Nearly half the companies on this year's list were buoyed by continued
consumer demand. They include: Best Buy, eBay, Home Depot, Lowe's, MBNA, Nike,
PepsiCo, and Starbucks, among others.

Insurer Progressive Corp. Tops the List

NEW YORK, March 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Progressive Corp., with strong revenue
gains and a robust 152% increase in its stock price since 2001, has catapulted
itself to the top spot in the 2004 BusinessWeek 50. The Mayfield Village
(Ohio)-based insurer first turned heads in the 1990s by giving prospective
customers price quotes from up to three rival insurers, as well as its own
-- a provocative move that won thousands of new accounts. Since then, the
company has never stopped trying to find ways to do things better, faster, and
cheaper for its 12 million customers, writes BusinessWeek in the April 5th
issue (on newsstands Monday, March 29).
Progressive epitomizes the spirit found among the companies in the
magazine's eighth annual rankings of the best-performing members of the
Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. Rounding out the top five this year are
Cendant (No. 2), WellPoint Health Networks (No. 3), UnitedHealth Group (No. 4)
and Forest Laboratories (No. 5).
Unlike other lists, the BusinessWeek 50 is not an exercise in tracking
which companies are the biggest or have the hottest stocks. Rather, the BW50
was designed to distinguish large companies that can go the distance with
strong operating and market performances. To determine the winners,
BusinessWeek runs a proprietary screen that's designed to measure growth in
revenues, profits, and returns to shareholders, over both one-and three-year
periods.
The BusinessWeek 50 list is dominated by companies that were
well-positioned to profit from the economic recovery -- health-care outfits,
homebuilders, and resurgent technology companies, as well as retailers that
have benefited from the resilience of the American consumer. But scratch
beneath the surface and the common denominator for many of this year's stars
is a deeper understanding than their rivals of what makes their customers
tick.
A prominent feature of this year's list is the importance of catering to
customers. The BW50 includes three homebuilders, and eight retailers -- the
most merchants in BW50's history. At a time when many corporate managers
complain that they have no pricing power -- a symptom of weak brands -- this
year's BW50 also includes a number of power brands like eBay (No.13),
Starbucks (No.25), and Harley-Davidson (No.43) that aren't so much selling
products as lifestyle choices for consumers worldwide.
The Class of '04 ranges from companies like Lowe's Cos. (No.9), which
sensed the importance of marketing its home-improvement wares to the women who
actually make the majority of home renovation decisions, to Dell (No.16),
which has built a cult following among corporate information-technology
managers for its low prices, certainly, but also for providing customers with
the data to better understand their own purchasing and usage patterns.
Surprisingly, nine health-care and drug companies made the cut this year
-- a relatively impressive showing, albeit a sharp drop from the 16 on last
year's list. The culprit: a decline among pharmaceutical makers, who have
suffered from patent expirations and a dearth of blockbuster drugs. Indeed,
with Merck's plunge from No.20 last year to No.270 this year, the last
surviving company to make the BW50 every year since inception has been
dethroned.
If there's one constant in the BusinessWeek 50 over the years, it has been
the amount of turnover. In part, that reflects recent roller-coaster-like
swings in sectors like energy, technology, telecom, and retailing.
Altogether, only 20 companies from the Class of '03 are making a repeat
appearance on the 2004 roster. Of the 30 newcomers, two of this year's best
performers, Symantec Corp. (No.15) and Express Scripts Inc. (No.42), were just
added to the S&P 500 during the past year.
Reflecting the resurgence of Silicon Valley, six technology companies made
the list, versus three last year. That's still a far cry from 1997, when our
inaugural ranking was dominated by 12 tech companies, including the top four:
Intel (which rejoins the list this year after a three-year absence),
Microsoft, Dell, and Cisco Systems.
Beginning March 25th, BusinessWeek Online (http://www.businessweek.com/bw50/)
will provide continuing coverage of the BusinessWeek 50 throughout the year,
starting with Street Wise investing columns on a number of the most prominent
BW50 companies. The site will also feature the BW50 interactive scoreboard
-- with daily, monthly and quarterly updates -- plus a special stock screener
for ranking companies based on the magazine's BW50 criteria, as well as
additional features.

The 2004 BusinessWeek 50 are:

Rank Company Name Ticker Rank Company Name Ticker
1 Progressive PGR 26 Procter & Gamble PG
2 Cendant CD 27 Yahoo YHOO
3 WellPoint Health Networks WLP 28 Apache APA
4 UnitedHealth Group UNH 29 Sears Roebuck SRJ
5 Forest Laboratories FRX 30 Stryker SYK
6 ACE ACE 31 Sysco SYY
7 Best Buy BBY 32 Dollar General DG
8 ConocoPhillips COP 33 Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY
9 Lowe's LOW 34 Quest Diagnostics DGX
10 Electronic Arts ERTS 35 Nike NKE
11 Pulte Homes PHM 36 Devon Energy DVN
12 Centex CTX 37 Intel INTC
13 eBay EBAY 38 Johnson Controls JCI
14 Chevron Texaco CVX 39 Staples SPLS
15 Symantec SYMC 40 American International
Group AIG
16 Dell DELL 41 Ambac Financial Group ABK
17 Qualcomm QCOM 42 Express Scripts ESRX
18 International Game
Technology IGT 43 Harley-Davidson HDI
19 MBNA KRB 44 PepsiCo PEP
20 Marathon Oil MRO 45 Burlington Resources BR
21 St. Jude Medical STJ 46 Carnival CCL
22 Home Depot HD 47 3M MMM
23 Exxon Mobil XOM 48 Apollo Group APOL
24 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 49 KB Home KBH
25 Starbucks SBUX 50 Humana HUM

About the BusinessWeek 50:
Since the BW50's inception seven years ago, BusinessWeek has set out to
rank Corporate America's best performers, by capturing both momentum and
sustainability. To determine how the companies in the S&P 500 index stack up
against one another, BusinessWeek ranks all 500 companies using eight key
criteria of financial success. Sales growth, profits, and return to
share-holders are all part of the criteria.
To reward consistency, performance is measured over both
one-and-three-year time periods. To get a better fix on which companies
squeeze the most out of operations, the magazine analyzes profit margins and
return on equity. Using those rankings, grades are then assigned for each
measure. The top 20% received an A, the next 20% got a B, and so on, down to
the F's in the bottom quintile. BusinessWeek then combines the individual
rankings and adds a weighting for sales volume and long-term debt-to-capital
ratio to come up with an overall ranking.


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