Orange County’s largest publicly traded companies have combined for a $6 billion boost to their market valuations over the past year, fueled in large part by gains at Irvine-based drug maker Allergan Inc., which tops the field at $33.3 billion.
The 100 largest public companies based here account for $115 billion in market value overall, according to the Business Journal’s annual list, the centerpiece of this week’s Special Issue (list starts on page 10; related stories throughout).
That’s a 5.5% increase compared with the 100 companies on last year’s list, which had a slightly different roster of companies.
The bump in total market value outpaced sales gains for the companies on this year’s list. This year’s crop combined for $103.3 billion in revenue during 2012, a 2.5% increase from the prior year.
Switch
This year’s list ranks OC-based companies by their market capitalization as of the end of March; prior lists ranked the companies by annual sales.
The switch in ranking criterion to market value brought a new ranking for Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro Inc., whose high-volume, low-margin distribution business made it a perennial occupant of the No. 1 spot when the rankings were based on revenue.
Ingram saw $37.8 billion in sales last year—roughly a third of the total revenue represented on this week’s list. The company dropped to the No. 5 spot based on its market value of about $2.96 billion.
It’s the third year running that companies on the list have accounted for a cumulative increase in sales, and the largest businesses by market value led the way.
Twenty four of the top 25 companies on this year’s list posted revenue increases in 2012.
Nearly half of the remaining 75 companies saw year-over-year declines in sales.
A similar trend played out in terms of profitability.
Only five companies among the top 25 largest on this week’s list reported losses over the past year. And only one of those was in the top 10: Aliso Viejo-based chipmaker Microsemi Corp., which reported a loss of nearly $30 million; the red ink is attributable to the costs of several acquisitions.
More than half of the remaining companies on this week’s list—40—reported losses for the prior year.
The trend of profits at the larger companies carried the entire list to a cumulative net income of about $5.7 billion, nearly doubling last year’s total of $2.97 billion.
More than half of the $5.7 billion came from two Irvine-based companies near the top of the list, No. 1 Allergan and No. 3 Western Digital Corp., the world’s top seller of disk drives.
Allergan saw 2012 sales of $5.8 billion and net income of nearly $1.1 billion. Western Digital had $12.6 billion in sales and posted $2 billion in profits last year.
The $115 billion in combined market value of OC’s 100 largest public companies is roughly the same as that of San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc., the world’s 45th-largest company by market value, according to Forbes.
The 5.5% year-over-year increase in combined market value for the listed companies lags the gains in the stock market. The S&P 500 index, for example, is up more than 13% over the past year, while the Nasdaq Composite Index is up nearly 17% over the period.
A gain of nearly 15% for Allergan shares was in line with the broader market.
The maker of drugs—such as wrinkle-remover Botox and eyelash-lengthener Latisse—now has a market value that exceeds the combined worth of the next two largest public companies in OC, Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. and Western Digital.
Broadcom, Allergan
Broadcom and Allergan have swapped the title as OC’s most valuable public company several times over the past dozen or so years, with the drug maker in the ascendancy of late.
Broadcom has lost about $2 billion in value from year-ago levels, while Allergan’s stock recently reached its highest levels in more than five years.
Shares of Broadcom peaked in 2000, when the company’s market value reached $60 billion.
This week’s list includes 20 companies that had a market value of more than $1 billion as of March 31, compared with 17 a year ago. Companies cracking the $1 billion mark this year include Foothill Ranch-based Kaiser Aluminum Corp. (No. 13), Irvine-based Endologix Inc. (No. 19), and Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc. (No. 19).
Forty-one of the public companies on this week’s list are based in Irvine, the most of any city. Newport Beach is second with 12 companies, followed by Santa Ana with 10.
