Silicon Valley's biggest winners and losers in 2008
HP biggest $ riser, Symantec biggest $ loss
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The MercuryNews.com 2008 Silicon Valley 150 rankings show Data Domain making the biggest annual percentage sales gain out of all the IT companies in the list at 122 per cent to $274.1m. Symantec made the biggest loss of all at -$6.6bn.
The SV150 rankings compare companies on their 2008 versus 2007 performance. Looking just at the IT companies 3PAR was the seventh highest percentage sales gainer overall, at 83 per cent to $171.1m.
Rackable was ranked number 10 in the largest percentage sales drop category, at -30 per cent to $248m. For those Silicon Valley residents worried about jobs, third ranked HP had the largest workforce rise at 87 per cent to 321,000. Apple grew its headcount 48 per cent to 32,000 and BlueCoat Systems 46 per cent to 1,033.
The largest IT supplier percentage workforce falls were Adaptect at -35 per cent to 391, Quantum -29 per cent to 2,050 and Rambus -25 per cent to 330. Continuing the dismal numbers, Sun ranked six in the biggest dollar sales drop category, with -$696m to $13.3bn. SanDisk ranked ten with a $545m slump to $3.3bn.
The largest losses in 2008 compared to 2007 were Symantec, ranked first of all at -$6.3bn, AMD number two through losing $3bn, SanDisk at number three with -$2.1bn and Sun was in fourth place, losing $1.8bn. Then Palm comes in at number nine with a loss of $681.7m, followed by number ten LSI with its loss of $622.3m.
On a much more cheerful note, HP was the biggest dollar riser of all in revenue terms, at $11bn. Apple was second with $6.5bn, Google third with $5.2bn, Oracle fourth with $2.6bn, and Cisco sixth with a rise of $1.89bn.
Looking at the SV150, the good news for some was very good but the bad news for others was very bad. The ones hit by the double whammy of major business performance problems, worsened by the recession saw sales speeding south. They'll be looking very hard indeed for green shoots of recovery. ®
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COMMENTS
Ignorance is bliss
A classic case of using numbers without understanding what they mean.
HP "employment" didn't rise (it didn't hire lots of new people) -- it bought EDS, which means it just has more people now. No new employment created, and actually quite a lot of folks lost their jobs as a result.
Symantec didn't "lose" $6Bn -- it is in fact a cash machine, generating more than $1.2Bn in cash every quarter. The loss is entirely on paper, an effect of how the beancounters deal with goodwill (the difference between book value of an acquisition and what you actually pay for it).
Nevertheless, it does indicate that Symantec has overpaid for its acquisitions. Clearly, it did not wring out the anticipated value inherent in the price paid. Otherwise there would be no goodwill to write off. But, surely not as good a bullet point for a story in the Merc.
Paris, because she understands the importance of real money.
See what happened
When you dropped Norton Utilities off your main product line to force people to use Norton ShitstormWorks 2003, Symantec?
Mine's the one with the yellow and white box with the Swiss Army knife on the front.
Symantec is doing ok...
Their stock dropped early in the year, forcing a writedown of a bunch of "goodwill" paid for the Veritas brand essentially. After they wrote that down their stock started heading up again.
The company itself is doing ok, but not great.
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