It’s sometimes OK not to be in the cool industry.
Orange County’s non-tech companies had watched with envy the ascent of their tech colleagues for months. Now they can breathe a sigh of relief that they are not falling as fast.
Caught in the industry-wide slide, OC tech companies took a big hit this past week, dragging down the Roth Capital Partners Billion-Dollar Club by 19% through the close of its period Thursday and continuing to plummet through late trading on Friday. The Roth Capital Partners OC 100 also declined big time, falling 8.7% through Thursday. These were the biggest declines in the past year for these indices. Over the past four weeks, these indices have declined 29% and 21%, respectively. (See Market Watch on page 14.)
The declines ran parallel to the 13.8% decline through Thursday of the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which also continued to suffer on Friday, down 10% in late trading.
The S & P; 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were also down over the same period, and were hit particularly hard Friday as the continuing tech collapse and inflation jitters affected the broader market. But they are more heavily weighted with old-economy stocks and were not hit as hard as the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
In fact, some old-economy companies didn’t even see so much as a bear’s claw the whole week. For example, through Thursday OC healthcare developer Allergan Inc. had moved up 2.3%, continuing a four-week trend that has seen it rise 4.4%. Other big OC companies that nudged ever so slightly upward included engineering giant Fluor Corp., up 4.6%, and REIT Health Care Property Investors Inc., up 3.7%. The three continued to be in plus territory for the week in late trading Friday.
Financial holding company Westcorp, home developer William Lyon Homes, sunglasses manufacturer Oakley Inc., temporary employment specialist RemedyTemp Inc., surfwear maker Quiksilver Inc., retailer Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., and consumer-optics maker Meade Instruments also were singing in the rain the last week.
Ingram Micro Inc., the Santa Ana-based distributor of high-tech equipment, hasn’t enjoyed the boom in the same way as some of the companies it distributes for. But in the week ended Thursday, it was up 5.1%, and it remained near that mark late Friday.
While many non-tech companies posted declines in the period ended Thursday, the losses weren’t as large as those in the high-tech sector. For example, Beckman Coulter Inc. was down 2.2% and ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. was down 0.2%. Meanwhile, Fidelity National Financial Inc., the nation’s largest title insurer, was flat. They were down 1% to 4% late Friday.
By contrast, OC’s high-tech industry took one right smack on the chin.
Broadcom Corp. fell 28.9% through Thursday, posting a $12 billion decline in market cap over the one-week period. It was down a further 11% in late trading Friday.
It wasn’t pretty for other OC high-tech stocks, either. Quest Software Inc., QLogic Corp. and Buy.com Inc. all posted large declines through Thursday,41.8%, 26.7% and 16.4%, respectively. They also were down another 13% to 16% in late trading Friday.
Other tech companies posting large declines through Thursday included Continuus Software Corp, down 49.6%, and Litronic Inc., down 45.8%.
One exception to the high-tech disaster known as last week: PairGain Technologies Inc. was up 8.1% through Thursday after announcing better-than-expected earnings. (It had fallen back about 4% as of Friday afternoon.)
While the tech companies are down for the week and for the four-week period, many of them are still up over the trailing 52 weeks. This is reflected in the OC indices. The Billion Dollar Club is up 100.2% for the prior 52 weeks. Likewise, the OC 100 is up 7.5% for the prior 52 weeks. n
