Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - Page updated at 11:24 a.m.
Best of the Northwest. The Seattle Times' 20th annual ranking
of the region's top public companies
for 2010 and the last two decades.
Top companies over two decades
Top companies of 2010
Founded: 1978
Headquarters: Wilsonville, Ore.
Major operations: Portland; Boston; Santa Barbara, Calif.; Bozeman, Mont.; Sweden and the United Kingdom. Major divisions are Government Systems and Commercial Systems
CEO: Earl Lewis
Employees: 3,215
Major products/services: Night vision and thermal-visioning equipment, military targeting systems, security cameras, equipment monitoring, home-inspection devices, night-vision systems for cars, marine electronics.
Founded: 1975
Headquarters: Redmond
Major operations: 40,310 employees work in the Puget Sound area, and the company has offices that dot the globe.
CEO: Steve Ballmer
Employees: 89,000
Major products/services: Windows operating-system software, Office productivity software, server software, video game console Xbox, search engine Bing, cloud-computing platform Azure, Windows Phone, online services such as MSN and Hotmail.
Castparts
Founded: 1956
Headquarters: Portland
Major operations: More than 100 manufacturing facilities in 24 states and 12 foreign countries
CEO: Mark Donegan
Employees: 18,100
Major products/services:Cast and forged-metal pieces for aircraft engines, gas turbines and other industrial uses; fasteners; specialty alloys.
Founded: 1971
Headquarters: Seattle
Major operations: 16,863 cafes in the U.S. and abroad, plus sales of coffee, bottled Frappuccino and other products in grocery stores.
CEO: Howard Schultz
Employees: 137,000
Major products/services:Coffee and tea, pastries and sandwiches.
Technology
Founded: 1978
Headquarters: Boise, Idaho
Major operations: Wafer-fabrication plants in seven locations, including two in the U.S. Four assembly and test operations and four memory module assembly plants, including in Boise.
CEO: Steve Appleton
Employees: 25,900
Major products/services: One of the world's leading semiconductor companies, making dynamic random-access memory and flash memory chips used in computers, networking and servers.
Founded: 1971
Headquarters: Seattle
Major operations: 16,863 cafes in the U.S. and abroad, plus sales of coffee, bottled Frappuccino and other products in grocery stores.
CEO: Howard Schultz
Employees: 137,000
Major products/services:Coffee and tea, pastries and sandwiches.
Group
Founded: 1932
Headquarters: Seattle
Major operations: Main subsidiaries Alaska Airlines and regional carrier Horizon Air. Alaska is the eighth-largest U.S. airline, with hubs in Seattle, Anchorage, Los Angeles and Portland.
CEO: Bill Ayer
Employees: 12,039
Major products/services: Provides service to 23 million passengers a year flying to more than 90 destinations in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It also has the most extensive air-cargo operation on the West Coast among passenger airlines.
Founded: 1996
Headquarters: Seattle
Major operations: Customers in more than 100 countries, including 60 percent of the Fortune 500.
CEO: John McAdam
Employees: 2,012
Major products/services: Provides application delivery networking software and hardware to optimize on-demand information technology, cloud computing and virtual computing.
Founded: 1994
Headquarters: Seattle
Major operations: Uses 30 million square feet of office, warehouse, data-center and customer-service space. Of that, nearly 19 million square feet is in North America and the rest is overseas.
CEO: Jeff Bezos
Employees: 33,700
Major products/services: Sells a broad array of products online directly and through third-party vendors across dozens of categories; also makes the Kindle e-reader and rents out computing power to other businesses and organizations.
Founded: 1993
Headquarters: Bellevue
Major operations: Uses nearly 78,000 square feet of space in Bellevue for administrative, marketing and product-development work; its Redbox subsidiary is based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., where it uses about 160,000 square feet.
CEO: Paul Davis
Employees: 2,585
Major products/services: Operates Redbox movie-rental and Coinstar coin-counting machines.
Analysis of two decades
Top performers navigate hard times with skill, emerge stronger
Best companies share key attributes: global reach, nimbleness, strong leadership.
20 years of volatility, and resilience | Jon Talton
Despite ruinous recessions and corporate losses, we rebound, rebuild, reinvent.
The top-ranked Northwest companies over the last 20 years.
How our ranking system was born
Return on equity is weighed heaviest, giving even the smallest companies a shot at the top.
The biggest change over 20 years is that fewer than 100 companies have qualified in the last three years.
2010 data analysis
Interactive database | This year's ranking and full financial data on 82 companies
Comparing the companies' performance, plus financial summaries
Top 10 | Sales stats: Sales growth, total sales and sales per employee
Earnings picture: Profit growth, total profit, profit margins and operating income
Stock performance: 2010 results, market cap, price-earnings ratios and dividends
Measuring returns: Return on equity and assets
Jon Talton
Jon Talton, the lead reporter on our Best of the Northwest section, writes a Sunday column and blogs weekdays on the region's most important economic news, trends and issues. Read more at:
CEO Pay | Northwest CEOs' pay rises 13%
Many top execs got more in 2010 because a big chunk of their compensation was linked to their companies' financial results.
For 2nd year, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is Northwest's best-paid executive
Income inequality grows as CEO pay climbs above historic levels | Jon Talton
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