12-Year-Old AST Makes Fortune 500
AST Research Inc., a personal computer maker, has made its debut on the prestigious Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest industrial companies.
AST was ranked No. 431 on the annual list published by Fortune magazine and released Wednesday. The Irvine firm had 1991 sales of $696.7 million.
“We have decided not to participate in the recession,” said Safi Qureshey, AST’s chief executive. “It’s a major accomplishment for our people. . . . We are the new kid on the block.”
AST has enjoyed strong sales growth despite the recession, which has hurt many other computer makers. The company, founded in 1980, got its start by making add-on memory products for the first International Business Machines Corp. personal computer, which was introduced in 1981. It began making personal computers in 1986. The company was founded by three immigrants--Qureshey, Thomas Yuen and Albert Wong--who were frustrated with their jobs at larger computer companies. Wong left the company after a falling out with the other co-founders in 1988.
AST now employs about 3,250 people in Irvine.
AST joined an exclusive club of four Orange County companies on the Fortune 500 list. The others are:
* Rockwell International Corp., a Seal Beach-based manufacturing conglomerate, which ranked No. 35, unchanged from last year, with 1991 sales of more than $12 billion.
* Western Digital Corp., an Irvine computer products company, which ranked 339th, down from 336th, with sales of $986.2 million.
* Allergan Inc., an Irvine eye-care products company, which ranked 354th, up from 365th, with $906.8 million in sales.
* Beckman Instruments Inc., a maker of medical instruments based in Fullerton, which ranked 373rd, up from 390th, with $857.9 million in sales.
General Motors Corp. remains atop the Fortune 500 list for a seventh straight year, the magazine said, but the giant auto maker’s huge losses kept it off a rival top-50 list compiled by Forbes magazine.
Fortune said 1991 was “an unparalleled disaster” for corporate America, with overall annual profits for top corporations plunging 41% to $55.1 billion. The magazine’s list of the 500 biggest industrial companies shows that more than 20% of the companies lost money last year.
