BW 50 Scoreboard

Special Report: The BusinessWeek 50
Slide Show: BusinessWeek's Top 50 Companies
Video: The BusinessWeek 50
Methodology: Picking the Year's Best Performers
Play It: The Best Performers

Here's our annual list of the 50 best corporate performers. To arrive at the BusinessWeek 50, we run data screens on all of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, focusing on sales growth rate and return on invested capital. All the companies are measured over time, to reward sustained performance, and compared against other companies in the same sector, to enable us to identify the best performers within their peer group. A board of BusinessWeek editors reviews the list, bringing the judgment that purely financial measures alone can't provide. You can sift through the interactive ranking below, to see how the BusinessWeek 50 companies stack up on any number of financial or qualitative measures.

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2009 Rank

2008 Rank

Company Name

Profitability %

Sales Growth Rate %

Market Value ($bil)

12-mo. Sales ($bil)

12-mo. Net Income ($bil)

One-yr. Total Return (%)

Three-yr. Total Return (%)

Sector

PROFITABILITY: Three-year average pretax profit as a percentage of average invested capital, or in the case of financial companies, as a percentage of average equity. Operating profit for nonfinancial companies is before special items.

SALES GROWTH RATE: Three-year average annual sales growth based on most recently reported 36 months, calculated using the least-squares method. For financial companies, three-year average annual asset growth is used.

MARKET VALUE: Share price on Feb. 27, 2009, multiplied by the latest available common shares outstanding.

SALES: Latest available sales through the most recent 12 months ended Jan. 31, 2009. Includes all sales and other operating revenues. For financial-services companies, this includes interest and non-interest income, and for banks, this includes revenues for all banking operations.

PROFITS: Latest available profits through the most recent 12 months ended Jan. 31, 2009. Net income from continuing operations before extraordinary items.

TOTAL RETURN (1 YEAR): Annual dividend per share, reinvested, plus Feb. 27, 2009, share price, as a percent of Feb. 29, 2008, share price.

TOTAL RETURN (3 YEAR): Annual dividend per share, reinvested, plus Feb. 27, 2009, share price, as a percent of Feb. 28, 2006, share price.

Companies with no ranking (NR) for 2008 did not make the BW 50 list that year.

* Data compiled on Feb. 27, 2009.

NOTE: Compustat data provided by Standard & Poor’s, from sources such as statistical services, registration statements, and company reports that S&P believes to be reliable but are not guaranteed by S&P or BusinessWeek as to correctness or completeness. This material is not an offer...