The techies are everywhere.
Last week, high-tech companies dominated the Orange County Business Journal’s list of the 50 largest publicly traded companies, ranked according to sales. This week, high-tech companies are all over the list of the county’s 51st- through 100th-largest publicly traded companies.
It’s further proof that Orange County’s tech sector is not just a couple of big companies, but rather it’s many players and they are having a widespread effect on the OC economy.
Companies like No. 65 Emulex Corp., No. 76 Quest Software Inc., No. 100 The TriZetto Group and No. 67 Micro General Corp. are among the fastest growing in sales, assets, profits and employees. Only a few non-high-tech companies, such as No. 51 Corinthian Colleges and No. 87 Diedrich Coffee, are posting similar gains.
Although these companies are in the middle tier in terms of sales, a look at market caps shows that the Street sees some of their potentials as huge. For example, Quest, based in Irvine, is No. 76 in terms of sales, but its market cap places it fifth county-wide. Similarly, Emulex of Costa Mesa, ranked No. 65 in sales, but sixth by market cap.
The Business Journal will follow this list with another in two weeks that will capture the rest of the more than 200 public companies based in OC.
The 50 companies on this year’s middle-tier list posted a total revenue of $3.86 billion, 15% less than last year’s list. This is mainly because some of last year’s larger-revenue companies like Calcomp Technology, which ceased operating, and Long Beach Financial Corp., which was acquired, dropped off the list. But compared with their own 1998 revenues, this year’s 50 companies posted a 19% aggregate gain.
Profit-wise, it doesn’t look good on the surface. The 50 companies posted a combined loss of $23 million. But this is an improvement over the $92 million in losses posted by last year’s mid-tier group. The losses were concentrated this year in five companies: Acme Communications of Santa Ana, $71 million; the Cerplex Group of Irvine, $48 million; Interplay Entertainment of Irvine, $40 million; ARV Assisted Living of Costa Mesa, $28 million; and Autobytel.com of Irvine, $23 million. If you take out these five companies, the other 45 firms posted a combined $187 million profit in 1999.
More Firms Profitable
Thirty-three of the 50 firms earned a profit, slightly better than the 30 that did so on last year’s list.
Irvine continues to be the favorite for corporate headquarters among the middle-tier firms, as 16 companies are headquartered in that city. But that’s down from 22 last year. Counting the 17 companies on the list of 50 largest companies that have their HQs in Irvine, a third of the county’s 100 largest publicly traded companies are headquartered in Irvine.
Santa Ana is growing in popularity, as the number of corporate headquarters there increased from four last year to 11. Other choice cities for headquarters: Newport Beach, six companies; Anaheim, three companies; and Costa Mesa, three companies.
The companies on this year’s list employ virtually the same number of people in OC as last year’s 51 to 100, 9,811 employees vs. 9,808 on last year’s list; but they have 21% fewer employees company-wide, at 27,296. When compared with their own ’99 numbers, though, the mid-tier firms grew their employees 8% in OC and 7% company-wide. The jobs were tabulated as of March.
The companies are buying more, as their assets grew 7% to $8 billion, when compared to themselves. But when compared to last year’s 50, they own 9% less.
The mid-tier companies are growing smaller in relation to the county’s biggest firms. For example, the mid-tier companies’ $3.9 billion in sales last year is only 3.6% of the $105.4 billion in sales by the largest 50 companies. On last year’s list, the sales of the mid-tier firms were 4.7% of the revenue posted by the 50 biggest firms.
Four of the five fastest-growing companies in terms of sales are Internet-related: The TriZetto Group of Newport Beach, up 188% to $33 million; Micro General of Santa Ana, up 180% to $95 million; Quest, up 104% to $71 million; Diedrich Coffee of Irvine, up 89% to $46 million; and Emulex, up 72% to $101 million.
The biggest sales declines were recorded by: No. 59 IMPAC Mortgage Holdings Inc. of Newport Beach, down 27% to $119 million; No. 71 Procom Technology Inc. of Santa Ana, down 25% to $82 million; No. 64 Interplay, down 20% to $102 million; and No. 96 SRS Labs Inc. of Santa Ana, down 20% to $36 million.
Climbing the fastest up the list were: Micro General, up 35 spots to No. 67; Meade Instruments of Irvine, up 27 to No. 55; Diedrich Coffee, up 25 to No. 87; Autobytel.com, Irvine, up 25 to No. 89; Emulex, up 23 to No. 65; and SM & A; of Newport Beach, up 22 to No. 61.
Those falling farthest down the list this year were Amplicon of Santa Ana, down 44 spots to No. 75 (because it’s restating the way it measures sales) and Comarco of Santa Ana, down 16 spots to No. 91 (even though its revenue and employee count both increased).
Three companies dropped below No. 100. The biggest fall, 60 spots to No. 122, was by Consumer Portfolio Services, which said it did not sell contracts in securitization transactions and its sales declined from $126 million in 1998 to $14 million last year. Also falling off the mid-tier list were NAB Asset Corp., from No. 95 to No. 106, and STM Wireless Inc, down from No. 97 to No. 109.
Disappearing Act
Nine companies are off the list entirely for a variety of reasons: No. 52 Calcomp Technology filed a certificate of dissolution; No. 58 Long Beach Financial which was acquired by Washington Mutual; No. 64 PIA Merchandising Services, which was acquired and relocated to New Jersey; No. 69 Smartflex Systems Inc., which was acquired by Michigan-based Saturn Electronics; No. 74 Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc., which was taken private; No. 80 First Alliance Corp, which filed for bankruptcy; No. 91 Imagyn Medical Technologies Inc., which completed a bankruptcy reorganization and was acquired by Credit Suisse First Boston Management Co.; No. 98 Magic Software, which only has an office in Irvine, not its headquarters, which is in Israel; and No. 99 Kofax Image Products Inc. was acquired by an investment group.
Two new companies joined the list because they relocated their headquarters to Orange County: No. 60 New Horizons Worldwide Inc. of Santa Ana and No. 88 Revere Transducers of Tustin. Another eight companies joined because they went public last year: Quest; No. 77 Eldorado Bancshares Inc. of Laguna Hills; No. 80 Troy Group of Santa Ana; Acme; No. 90 Keith Companies of Costa Mesa; No. 94 Continuus Software Corp. of Irvine; No. 99 Collector’s Universe of Santa Ana; and TriZetto Group.
Among those companies making large percentage gains in profits were: Corinthian Colleges, up 297% to $10.92 million; No. 58 Rainbow Technologies of Irvine, up 227% to $8.1 million; and No. 93 Chicago Pizza & Brewery of Mission Viejo, up 359% to $390,000.
Dramatic Turnarounds
Among those firms making a dramatic turnaround from the previous year were: IMPAC Mortgage Holdings, from a $6 million loss in 1998 to a $22 million profit in 1999; No. 72 Odetics of Anaheim, from a $13 million loss to an $8 million profit; and Emulex, from a $12 million loss to a $20 million profit.
The companies with the largest growth in assets were: TriZetto Group, up 685% to $68 million; Emulex, up 551% to $196 million; Diedrich Coffee, up 417% to $12.7 million; Quest, up 405% to $99 million; and Autobytel.com, up 177% to $95 million.
The TriZetto Group is also the fastest grower, percentage-wise, in OC employees, increasing 117% to 65. Other fast growers this past year were: Quest, up 89% to 359; SRS Labs, up 70% to 34; and Comarco, up 64% to 200 employees.
Company-wide, the fastest grower was also the TriZetto Group, with a 171% increase to 760 employees, followed by: Quest, up 165% to 818 employees; Diedrich Coffee, up 159% to 513; No. 98 Bridge Technology of Garden Grove, up 108% to 220 employees; and Micro General, up 102% to 400 employees.
The company shrinking the most, percentage-wise, in OC was No. 97 AlphaServ.com of Santa Ana, down 82% to 20 employees. Other firms downsizing included: No. 57 Pacific Gulf Properties of Newport Beach, down 60% to 31 employees; No. 79 CORE of Irvine, down 27% to 57; and No. 84 L.L. Knickerbocker of Lake Forest, down 23% to 64.
Company-wide, the firm that downsized the most was No. 73 Cerplex Group, down 52% to 649 employees. Also downsizing were: No. 95 Quality Systems of Tustin, down 48% to 120 employees; and SRS Labs, down 44% to 116 employees. n
