STRONG FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
2018 was a big year for the Silicon Valley. In the current Lonergan SV150, our ranking of Silicon Valley public companies by revenue, sales topped $1 trillion for the first time. Profitability was also up, with companies earning combined profits of $193 billion, up over 60% from 2017.
Click below for a downloadable PDF of the rankings suitable for printing.
Apple continues to dominate the list, as it has since 2011, when it ousted Hewlett-Packard from the top spot. Apple’s 2018 revenue (adjusted to the calendar year - their fiscal year ends in September) was $261.6 billion, up 9% over the prior year, and represents 24% of the combined sales of the companies on the SV150.
Mega-size companies lead off the list. Besides Apple, the rest of the companies in the top ten represent 45% of total revenues. The top 50 companies, many of which are represented on the S&P 500, represent 94% of total revenue.
The top ten companies alone generated $160 billion in net income, and of these ten companies, only #10 ranked Tesla showed a loss (-$976 million). The most profitable of the top ten companies based on profit margin (net income divided by sales) was #5 ranked Facebook, which enjoyed a 40% profit margin on sales of $55.8 billion.
For an extended company profile on each of the Lonergan SV150, including market cap, net income and performance ratios, click below for a downloadable PDF worksheet suitable for printing.
IPO ACTIVITY AND M&A MOVE IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS
IPO activity, long the Holy Grail of tech start-ups, came back as a factor after several sluggish years in which unicorns took a “wait and see” attitude to going public. The largest IPO hitting the list this year is #18 ranked Uber, with #48 ranked Lyft joining in at 1/5th Uber’s size.
A total of 10 IPOs are included in the 2019 Lonergan SV150. In addition to #18 Uber and #48 Lyft mentioned above, our listing includes six IPOs from the first half of 2019, such as #86 Pinterest, #116 Zoom Video Communications, #148 Fastly, and #150 Sonim Technologies.
All ten new IPOs are listed below:
| Rank | Company (IPO year) | Business Description | 2018 Sales (M) | Profitability | Growth | Mkt Cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | Uber (2019) | Transportation network | $11,207 | -16% ("normalized") | 42% | $76.4 b |
| 48 | Lyft (2019) | Transportation network | $2,157 | -42% | 103% | $17.5 b |
| 86 | Pinterest (2019) | Photo sharing platform | $756 | -8% | 60% | $14.9 b |
| 116 | Zoom Video (2019) | Web conferencing platform | $331 | 2% | 119% | $24.7 b |
| 122 | Eventbrite (2018) | Online event ticketing | $292 | -22% | 45% | $1.4 b |
| 127 | SVMK (2018) | Online survey platform | $254 | -61% | 16% | $2.2 b |
| 128 | Upwork (2018) | Online freelance marketplace | $253 | -8% | 25% | $1.6 b |
| 132 | Anaplan (2018) | Financial planning software | $241 | -54% | 38% | $6.1 b |
| 148 | Fastly (2019) | Website speed platform | $145 | -51% | 49% | $236 m |
| 150 | Sonim Technologies (2019) | Mobile devices for rugged uses | $136 | -12% | 58% | $310 m |
Market cap reflects value on June 7, 2019. Uber profitabily shown on the table reflects "normalized" net income reported by Thomson Reuters; unadjusted net income for 2018 including one-time gains was pushed into the positive, mostly from the sale of its Russian and Southeast Asia businesses.
M&A activity among ranked public companies has slowed down a bit. In the first half of 2019, only four companies on last year’s ranking were acquired. The peak year for M&A among large public companies on the list was 2016, when 18 companies on the prior year’s list went away.
The largest company on last year’s ranking to be acquired was #50 ranked Verifone, a global payment and commerce solution provider, which was bought by Francisco Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm in late 2018, in deal said to be worth $3.4 billion.
MORE WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP IN SILICON VALLEY
Women's representation in leadership has been an indisputable hot topic in Silicon Valley for several years. Since 2014, we have been tracking gender for CEOs in the Silicon Valley 150. Since 2015, we have tracked women serving on corporate boards.
The good news is that women’s representation in the board room is way up. In our 2015 board study, women filled 157 seats in the SV150 (or 14%). That number has risen 96% to 307 seats filled by women directors today (23% of total seats). This timing in part reflects the impact of legislation passed in 2018, requiring public companies headquartered in California to have at least one woman on the board by the end of 2019, or pay a fine. This requirement steps up so that by the end of 2021, these boards will need at least three women directors.
Not surprisingly, our numbers show women are now represented in more SV150 boardrooms: in 2015, we found 45 boards of the SV150 had no women directors – this has dropped to only 7 companies today. Also, instances of the “lone woman” phenomenon, in which there is only a single woman’s voice heard on the board, has dropped from 67 boards in 2015, to only 47 boards today.
SV150 Board Membership over Time
| Summer 2015 | Summer 2018 | Summer 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SV150 board seats | 1100 | 1250 | 1310 |
| Women filled board seats | 157 | 237 | 307 |
| Percent women filled board seats | 14% | 19% | 23% |
| Number boards with no women members | 45 | 24 | 7 |
Source: Lonergan Partners 2015 Who Runs Silicon Valley board report and the Lonergan SV150 annual analysis 2018-19; board composition data was sourced both from company websites and proxy information. 2015 board data above adjusted to include all 150 companies of the Mercury News SV150 (reported data in summer 2015 excluded six acquired companies).
The not so good news for women in tech is despite these gains, the Lonergan SV150 can currently claim only seven women CEOs, including the newest member of this exclusive list, founder-CEO Julia Hartz of #122 ranked Eventbrite (IPO 2018). We have been tracking this number since 2013, and the current number of women CEOs in the SV150 is down from its recent high of eight in 2015. For now, the women CEOs in the Lonergan SV150 are: Safra Catz (#7 Oracle), Lisa Su (#24 AMD), Jayshree Ullal (#49 Arista), Katrina Lake (#61 Stitch Fix), Lynn Jurich (#85 Sunrun), Kimberly Popovits (#111 Genomic Health), and Julia Hartz (#122 Eventbrite).
The silver lining to this short list may be that while none of the eight women CEOs we reported in 2015 were also company founders, today we have three: Katrina Lake, Lynn Jurich, and Julia Hartz are all CEO founders. These three women represent a promising trend impacting the ranks of women CEOs today.