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Qualcomm Rank 13 in 9th Annual BusinessWeek 50

Heavy Industry Makes a Comeback in 9th Annual BusinessWeek 50 Ranking of Top Performing U.S. Companies
Thursday March 24, 6:12 pm ET

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050324/nyth142_3.html

NEW YORK, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- A combination of thoughtful and well- timed acquisitions along with a rebound in steel prices helped catapult Charlotte-based steelmaker Nucor Corp. into the No. 1 spot on this year's BusinessWeek 50 list. By snatching up 10 steel plants on the cheap, Nucor successfully navigated the downturn in the steel market. Then, when global steel prices began to rebound, the acquisition strategy paid off and Nucor's profits soared seventeen-fold, from the $62.8 million earned in 2003, to $1.1 billion last year.
Nucor is symbolic of the strong showing made by oil and heavy industry companies on this year's BusinessWeek 50 list. In fact, surging commodity prices helped big oil companies win six of the top 10 spots on the list. Rounding out the top five are ConocoPhillips (No. 2), ChevronTexaco (No. 3), Valero Energy (No. 4) and UnitedHealth Group (No.5).

Even with the surge of industrial companies, this year's list isn't all diesels and smokestacks. Technology companies show up in numbers unseen since the boom days. Cisco Systems and Microsoft return after a yearlong hiatus to make their fifth and sixth appearances on the list, respectively, and Internet stars eBay and Yahoo! are repeat performers. In fact, the 2005 roster of BusinessWeek 50 companies is the most diverse in the ranking's history. See page two for the full list and rankings.

Beginning on March 25th, BusinessWeek Online will enhance the magazine coverage of the BusinessWeek 50. In partnership with Capital IQ and Standard & Poor's, the site will include more detailed information pages on each of the BusinessWeek 50 companies as well as a table comparing the compensation of the CEOs of companies on the list. The site will also feature the BusinessWeek 50 Interactive Scoreboard-with daily and monthly updates. For these and additional features visit: http://www.businessweek.com/bw50 .

About the BusinessWeek 50:

Since the inception of the list, 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 ten key criteria of financial success, starting with sales and earnings growth. BusinessWeek tallies both for the most recent 12-month and three-year periods, to reward companies that can prosper over times. As a gauge of how well management deploys its resources, net profit margins and return on equity are factored in. And finally, BusinessWeek accounts for the market's view, by measuring total shareholder returns for one- and three-year periods.

BusinessWeek weights the results for sales volume, because it's harder for large companies to post impressive revenue- and profit-growth figures. And the debt-to-capital ratio is factored in, to recognize clean balance sheets. That also makes it harder for corporations to qualify with growth that's primary the result of debt-laden acquisitions.


The 2005 BusinessWeek 50

Rank Company Name Ticker Rank Company Name Ticker

1 Nucor Corp. NUE 26 Johnson & Johnson JNJ
2 Conoco Phillips COP 27 Carnival Corp. CCL
3 Chevron Texaco Corp. CVX 28 Adobe Systems Inc. ADBE
4 Valero Energy Corp. VLO 29 Cummins Inc. CMI
5 UnitedHealth UNH 30 Boston Scientific BSX
Group Inc. 31 EOG Resources Inc. EOG
6 Occidental OXY 32 Symantec Corp. SYMC
Petroleum Corp. 33 Starbucks Corp. SBUX
7 Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM 34 Electronic Arts Inc. ERTS
8 Yahoo! Inc. YHOO 35 WellPoint Inc. WLP
9 Nextel NXTL 36 Deere & Co. DE
Communications Inc. 37 U.S. Steel Corp. X
10 Apache Corp. APA 38 Zimmer Holdings Inc. ZMH
11 Devon Energy Corp. DVN 39 Fedex Corp. FDX
12 Pulte Homes Inc. PHM 40 Chubb Corp. CB
13 Qualcomm Inc. QCOM 41 XTO Energy Inc. XTO
14 Apple Computer Inc. AAPL 42 Microsoft Corp. MSFT
15 Dell Inc. DELL 43 Danaher Corp. DHR
16 Paccar Inc. PCAR 44 Unocal Corp. UCL
17 Coach Inc. COH 45 Dow Chemical Co. DOW
18 Sunoco Inc. SUN 46 Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO
19 eBay Inc. EBAY 47 Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD
20 Burlington BR 48 Nike Inc. NKE
Resources Inc. 49 Anadarko Petroleum Corp. APC
21 Progressive Corp. PGR 50 Bank of America Corp. BAC
22 Caremark Rx Inc. CMX
23 Caterpillar Inc. CAT
24 Phelps Dodge Corp. PD
25 Autodesk Inc. ADSK




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Source: BusinessWeek