12/6/99 Fortune 141+
1999 WL 27633162
Fortune Magazine
Copyright 1999
Monday, December 6, 1999
Issue: December 6, 1999 Vol. 140 No. 11
Features/Cover Stories/The FORTUNe-50
The FORTUNe-50 The antiquated Dow can't even begin to measure today's fleet
Internet economy. So we scoured every e-industry imaginable to assemble the
inaugural version of our index.
Christine Chen Reporter Associates Christine Chen, Feliciano Garcia, Ahmad
Diba, and Karen VellaZarb
See also pages 130, 152, 156, 166, 172 of same issue
If you think of the Dow Jones industrial index as 20th-century and
stodgy, you could well find yourself welcoming FORTUNE's e-50 index
as millennial and fly. We want this assembly of companies to serve
dependably as Wall Street's barometer of e-commerce, so we've chosen
the constituents with utmost care. The list encompasses wildly
ambitious startups like Global Crossing, which hopes its
transatlantic network will serve as the backbone for entire e-
industries, and old-timers like AT&T, which was founded in 1875,
began trading publicly in 1900, and today gets about 20% of its
revenue from data services. We've picked Internet auctioneer eBay,
which operates with a skeletal staff of just 138 employees, and
behemoth IBM, which has almost 300,000.
Dozens of dot-coms failed to make the cut. We eliminated companies
that we deemed passing fads (the rejects shall remain nameless) in
favor of promising startups like Razorfish, a new-generation
consulting firm in Manhattan that eked out a $2 million profit in the
past four quarters. In fact, more than half the companies here are
profitable--remarkable, given that this is an e-list.
The most important shared attribute of the companies on these
pages has nothing to do with margins or size. These companies get it:
They understand the profundity of the Internet and its power to change business.
We're confident you'll see interesting performance
from them. So check 'em out.
--Christine Chen
[A]Revenue Four qtrs. ended 6/30 [B]Profits Four qtrs. ended 6/30
[C]Market cap As of 11/4/99 [D]Employees[1] [E]IPO date Year
founded[2] [F]What makes it a FORTUNe-50 company
ALL FIGURES IN MILLIONS
E-COMPANIES
[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] America Online[3]
$4,777 $762 $164,308 12,100 3/19/92 www.aol.com
1985 [F]With 19 million subscribers, AOL's the No. 1 online service
and a Net predator, having gobbled CompuServe and Netscape. Its
biggest challenge: sustaining stellar growth--its stock is up 300%
this year.
Charles Schwab $4,113 $498 $34,194 13,300 9/ 23/87 www.schwab.com
1986 [F]The Web's top stockbroker controls $263 billion in customer
assets and conducts 67% of its trades online. Success now depends on
fending off Wall Street firms that want a piece of the online action.
Amazon.com $1,015 -$291 $21,202 2,100 5/
15/97 www.amazon.com
1994 [F]The retail e-heavyweight has 12 million customers and a
projected $1.4 billion in sales this year. Can it ever make a profit?
With CEO Jeff Bezos' lavish spending habits, it's hard to tell.
E*Trade Group[4] $621 -$54 $8,341 1,735 8/
16/96 www.etrade.com
1982 [F]CEO Christos Cotsakos wants you to go to E*Trade for every
financial service imaginable--bill paying, stock trades, and
mortgages. A recent surge of acquisitions may bring that dream closer
to reality.
Knight/Trimark Group[5] $618 $119 $4,389 446 7/
8/98 www.knight-sec.com
1995 [F]Capitalizing on the convergence of technology and WallStreet,
Knight/Trimark handles nearly 20% of all Nasdaq trades,
making it the back office for much of the stock trading that people
do online.
Yahoo $341 $22 $47,946 803 4/
12/96 www.yahoo.com
1995 [F] With steady ad revenues, inroads into e-commerce and
auctions, and acquisitions like GeoCities, the Internet's most
popular portal is ready to compete with AOL.
Ameritrade Holding[6] $301 $12 $3,740 985 3/
4/97 www.ameritradeholding.com
1992 [F]Ameritrade is only the sixth-largest online brokerage, but it
seems to have positioned itself as the choice of the masses by
charging just $8 a trade. The company now generates 80% of its
revenue from the Web.
EarthLink Network $254 -$88 $1,409 1,343 1/
22/97 www.earthlink.net
1994 [F]This ISP is on fire. EarthLink connects more than 1.5 million
users to the Net; it recently snapped up rival MindSpring and
announced the rollout of superfast DSL service.
Priceline.com $189 -$125 $7,963 194 3/
30/99 www.priceline.com
1998 [F]Backed by an IPO that raised $160 million, the "name your own
price" company is expanding beyond airline tickets to auto sales,
home financing, and online groceries.
CMGI[7] $176 $476 $12,567 1,024 1/
25/94 www.cmgi.com
1986 [F]CEO David Wetherell has transformed the company into a major
Net venture capital firm. With its acquisition of the AltaVista
portal, CMGI gains crucial promotional leverage for its other
subsidiaries.
Lycos[7] $136 -$52 $5,687 456 4/
2/96 www.lycos.com
1995 [F]No longer an also-ran portal, Lycos now gets 30 million
visitors monthly. It's looking to diversify through the formation of
a venture fund and the acquisition of the financial information site
Quote.com.
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