State’s High-Tech Companies Score Dramatic Gains
If Rust Belt companies had cause to celebrate their strong resurgence last year, so too did many of California’s high-technology companies.
Paced by torrid exports and surging demand for a host of new products, the high-tech manufacturers showed the greatest improvement among the 42 California concerns on Fortune magazine’s latest ranking of the nation’s top 500 industrial concerns.
“The recovery for the computer and electronics sectors has been very strong,” said Joseph Wahed, chief economist for Wells Fargo Bank.
As usual, however, giant oil companies dominated the top of the list, with Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, Atlantic Richfield and Unocal holding four of the five top spots among California companies.
Computer manufacturers were strong across a wide spectrum of products. Apple Computer, the Cupertino-based pioneer in personal computing, jumped 38 spots to become the 152nd-largest company on the Fortune 500 list. The company has enjoyed strong sales of its Macintosh computers, particularly new models aimed at business markets.
Mainframe computer maker Amdahl climbed to the 231st spot from 310th, as sales climbed 56%. Amdahl also starred in the profit department; its gain of 249% was the biggest in the computer industry.
Tandem Computers, whose machines are used mainly in transaction processing, jumped to 318th from 365th. And 6-year-old Sun Microsystems, a maker of scientific workstations, vaulted onto the list for the first time as No. 463, with a 156% increase in sales. Atari also broke onto the list as No. 484, as sales climbed 91%.
The state’s largest computer concern, Hewlett-Packard, increased its ranking only slightly, to 49th from 51st. Overall, the 25 computer companies listed by Fortune nationwide posted a median sales increase of 16% and a median profit rise of 27%.
Others Move Higher
California’s semiconductor companies, riding the surge in computer and other electronic equipment sales, showed big gains. Intel, the Santa Clara supplier of the hot 80386 microprocessor for top-of-the-line IBM personal computers, starred, becoming the 200th-largest industrial concern last year, up from 256th the year before.
Intel thus edged out rival National Semiconductor, which itself climbed to 204th from 227th. Advanced Micro Devices jumped strongly to No. 328, from 436, on the strength of its acquisition of Monolithic Memories last August. Still, the struggling company posted a loss of $48 million last year.
Seagate Technology, which supplies disk drive memory storage devices for personal computers, surged to a ranking of 335 from 481.
The acquisition of Bear Creek propelled San Francisco direct-sales vitamin company and personal care products company Shaklee back onto the Fortune 500 after an absence of several years. Shaklee was 442nd.
Other California newcomers included Magnetek, 419; Homestake Mining, 471; and Western Digital, 499. Another newcomer to the list, 488th-ranked AFG Industries, relocated this year from Irvine, Calif., to Fort Worth, Texas and went private.
Lockheed, California’s fourth-largest public company, maintained its rank as the nation’s 30th largest, while Northrop slipped to 69th from 64th, and Litton Industries fell to 96th from 83rd.
