LSV 150 Company Insights - 2022

2021 is a surge year for just about everything

2021 set records for just about every­thing in the Lon­er­gan Sil­i­con Val­ley 150:

Rev­enues: up 25% from last year’s rank­ing, to $1.56 Tril­lion - a new high
Net income: up 42% from last year’s rank­ing, to $342 Bil­lion - also a record high
Mar­ket cap: up 8% from March 31 of last year, to $10.6 Tril­lion, despite the head­quar­ters moves of new­ly Texas-based Tes­la, Ora­cle, and HPE, as well as the down­ward pres­sure on stocks from recent glob­al eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal events — this is a record high for the LSV150

On top of all this record shat­ter­ing, there was a block­buster crop of 17 new­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies added to the rank­ings, as well as eight mov­ing HQs out of the area, and twelve being acquired/​going pri­vate.

Our rank­ings are dom­i­nat­ed by Apple: #1 ranked Apple (rep­re­sent­ing 24% of Lon­er­gan SV150 rev­enue) con­tin­ued to be a major con­trib­u­tor to deter­min­ing over­all growth. Apple grew cal­en­dar year 2021 rev­enues by 29% ver­sus only 10% for the 2020 cal­en­dar year (Apple fis­cal year adjust­ed per our rank­ing method­ol­o­gy; the Apple fis­cal year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021). 

Explo­sion of IPOs

In 2021, Sil­i­con Val­ley com­pa­nies con­tin­ued to go pub­lic with enthu­si­asm, with the debut of such long await­ed IPOs/​direct list­ings such as Roblox (LSV#63) and Robin­hood (LSV#66). This pace has slowed with recent eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty dri­ving a long pause in pub­lic listings.

The high­est rank­ing debut IPO on the Lon­er­gan SV150 is LSV#53 ranked AppLovin, with 2021 rev­enues of $2.8 billion.

All 17 new­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies added to this year’s rank­ings are shown below:

Increase in acqui­si­tion activ­i­ty; pick­up in com­pa­nies going private

As of this post­ing, twelve Lon­er­gan SV150 ranked pub­lic com­pa­nies have been ful­ly acquired and delist­ed since our rank­ing last year. These include: 

• (2021 LSV#42) Var­i­an Med­ical acquired by Siemans 
• (2021 LSV#43) Xil­inx acquired by AMD 
• (2021 LSV#45) McAfee tak­en private 
• (2021 LSV#54) Max­im acquired by Ana­log Devices 
• (2021 LSV#79) Proof­point acquired by Thoma Bravo 
• (2021 LSV#82) Fire­Eye, whose prod­uct busi­ness was acquired by Sym­pho­ny Tech­nol­o­gy Group and is now spun-off as Trellix 
• (2021 LSV#86) Slack acquired by Sales​force​.com 
• (2021 LSV#92) Cloud­era tak­en private 
• (2021 LSV#100) Inphi acquired by Mar­vell 
• (2021 LSV#119) Glu Mobile acquired by EA 
• (2021 LSV#115) Medal­lia acquired by Thoma Bravo
• (2021 LSV #146) Vocera acquired by Stryker.

As of the time of this analy­sis in April 2022, there are a few addi­tion­al LSV150 ranked com­pa­nies in the process of being acquired/​going pri­vate, includ­ing HP Inc.​‘s inten­tion to acquire LSV#67 Poly; II-VI’s plan to acquire LSV#72 Coher­ent; and Thoma Bravo’s plan to acquire LSV#109 Ana­plan. Cis­co (LSV#6) made a Feb­ru­ary 2022 offer for LSV#55 Splunk, but this deal does not seem to be mov­ing forward.

Some believe the FTC’s suc­cess­ful­ly block­ing NVIDI­A’s acqui­si­tion of Arm in ear­ly 2022 may be evi­dence of a slow­down in large tech deals going forward.

Note: there were only five com­pa­nies com­ing off the pri­or year’s rank­ing after being ful­ly acquired in the sub­se­quent twelve months. These were Fit­bit (2020 LSV#60), Forescout (2020 LSV#123), Tele­nav (2020 LSV#139), Mobile­iron (2020 LSV#144), and Livon­go Health (2020 LSV#149).

Leav­ing the Sil­i­con Val­ley was pop­u­lar for the sec­ond year in a row

Eight com­pa­nies on last year’s 2021 Lon­er­gan SV150 rank­ing moved head­quar­ters out of the Sil­i­con Val­ley, with all but one mov­ing out of state. Togeth­er these com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ed $68 bil­lion in rev­enue (most­ly from Tes­la) and $1.3 tril­lion in March 31, 2022 mar­ket cap.

Which eight com­pa­nies from the rank­ings from last year have moved?

The sev­en com­pa­nies from the year pri­or​’s movers list were: Ora­cle, HPE, Avaya, Align, VIAVI, Nat­era, and Avi­at, bring­ing the total num­ber of HQ movers to 15 in two years.

Lon­er­gan SV150 head­quar­ters dis­pers­ing across the Bay Area

The his­toric home for the Sil­i­con Val­ley in the old orchard coun­try of the South Bay remains the cen­ter of grav­i­ty for the head­quar­ters of the LSV 150. San­ta Clara Coun­ty hosts 65 of the LSV 150 head­quar­ters, and even with­out behe­moth Apple (LSV#1) with its ​“space­ship” head­quar­ters in Cuper­ti­no, the com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in San­ta Clara rep­re­sent 50% of our rank­ings’ rev­enues and mar­ket cap.

Far­ther north, San Fran­cis­co is now home to 43 (29%) of Lon­er­gan SV150 head­quar­ters, which is a dou­bling since 2018. The com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in San Fran­cis­co rep­re­sent 9% of rev­enues and 13% of mar­ket cap.

For the first time, coun­ties oth­er than San Fran­cis­co are show­ing grow­ing HQ appeal; the fastest grow­ing coun­ty for HQs was Alame­da, which grew 20% from 13 HQs to 16 HQs. San Mateo Coun­ty also con­tin­ues to grow, with 22 HQs overall.

As for the newest com­pa­nies on the rank­ings, there is some grat­i­fy­ing diver­si­ty in the loca­tions cho­sen for their HQs:

• 6 of the 17 new­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies debut­ing on the list are head­quar­tered in San Fran­cis­co 
• 2 of the 17 new­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies are in Oak­land (Mar­qe­ta (LSV#119) and thredUP (LSV#146)) which is in Alame­da County
• Of the remain­ing 9 new­ly pub­lic com­pa­nies, 5 are in San Mateo Coun­ty and 4 are in San­ta Clara County

Read the LSV 150 Peo­ple Insights for updates on founders, board and CEO gen­der diver­si­ty, and dual class stock ownership