In tight economic times, choosing your job out of business school can be as important as choosing which school to attend in the first place. In its 12th annual BusinessWeek 50, released last week, BW ranks the best-performing companies on the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which can help provide some clues when evaluating job prospects.
“With the economy sitting on the precipice of what could potentially be a deep recession, management vision and moxie could spell the difference between the companies that not only survive, but thrive, and those that are carried away in the economic undertow,” writes BW.
To identify its top 50 companies, BW focuses on two core financial measures – average return on capital and growth – taken over the past 36 months. (Greater weight is given to return on capital.) In order to identify companies that are the best performers relative to their peers, BW then compared companies against others in their sector. Note, this ranking does not take the company’s stock performance into consideration.
“The BusinessWeek 50 really takes the sort of long-run perspective that CEOs and long-term investors would like to see Wall Street take, which is that we are looking at the key fundamentals,” says BW’s chief economist Mike Mandel in an online interview about the report.
Handbag maker Coach tops the list this year, receiving praise from BW for adjusting quickly to introduce a more affordable line of products upon realizing that its $900 bags might seem too pricey in turbulent economic times. Northern California biotech firm Gilead Sciences came in at number two, for its development of cheaper, easier HIV treatment drugs.
Many companies on the list this year share this in common: their management has refused to be constrained by conventional wisdom. International companies had a stronger showing on this year’s list than in the past.
To read the BW 50 in its entirety, including profiles of each of this year’s top companies, click here.
