I do not know why ASND dropped. The following article mentions ASCEND.
New Index Reveals WHICH INTERNET BUSINESSES ARE GETTING RICH.
Inter@active Week's Fast 50 Shows Top Businesses
Sell Equipment and Software for Net's Infrastructure
GARDEN CITY, N.Y., June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The top performing Internet companies are selling the equipment and software essential to the Net's infrastructure.
According to the results of Inter@ctive Week's Fast 50, its newly created ranking of the fastest growing, most valuable publicly held companies in the interactive industry, the leaders are producing network access products, communications equipment, computer storage devices and data communications and networking software. "In the battle to build Internet-based businesses, it's the arms dealers who are getting rich first," is how the Inter@ctive Week senior writer, Steven Vonder Haar, puts it in his story introducing the Fast 50.
The Inter@ctive Week Fast 50 is designed to identify those companies in the interactive business which are growing rapidly and whose prospects for additional growth are valued most highly by investors.
To make the Inter@ctive Week Fast 50, a company must excel in four areas: revenue growth, indicating the ability to achieve momentum in the marketplace; operating income growth, showing the ability to create and grow the amount of profit generated by basic operations; one-year total return to stockholders, the litmus test of how well owners are being rewarded for their investments in companies; and market capitalization, the benchmark that capsulizes investors' views of a company's prospects to perform well in the future.
Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, editor-in-chief of Inter@ctive Week, said, "The combination puts a premium on the characteristics that make for successful companies in an industry that changes as fast as the interactive business: the capacity to achieve ubiquity quickly, keep an eye on the bottom line, and sell the story to sources of capital."
The current winners in the Internet business boom are providing the building blocks for the Internet infrastructure. Inter@ctive Week's Fast 50 will be the yardstick to watch, having established a foundation for ranking of financial performance that reflects the unique characteristics of the interactive industry.
Of the top 20 companies listed in the Fast 50, 19 develop some piece of equipment or software that streamlines the way networks handle data traffic.
The results are surprising: companies capitalizing on the Internet boom aren't the high-profile Internet players drawing headlines for cutting the price of Net access, or rolling out new interactive services on the Web.
At the top of the Fast 50 is ASCEND COMMUNICATIONS, INC. (Alameda, CA), maker of remote network access equipment for Internet service providers. Between 1994 and 1995, Ascend quadrupled sales, while investors enjoyed a six-fold return on investments in the year that ended April 30.
Inter@ctive Week is the single source for the Internet, infrastructure and digital commerce. Published 26 times a year, it has a controlled circulation of more than 70,000. Inter@citve Week is a joint venture of Inter@ctive Enterprises and the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Inter@ctive Week is a member of the growing family of Ziff-Davis Internet publications. Other titles include: ZD Internet Magazine, Yahoo! Internet Life, Internet Underground, and Pl@net (published in Germany).
The combined circulation of these titles make Ziff-Davis the leading publisher of Internet magazines in the world. Ziff-Davis is also the leading publisher of computer magazines.
In the U.S., the company publishes PC Magazine, PC Week, PC Computing, Computer Shopper, MacUser, MacWeek, Windows Sources, Computer Life, FamilyPC (with the Walt Disney Company), Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly, EGM2, P.S.X., CyberSports, and Intelligent Gamer's Fusion. Outside the U.S., Ziff-Davis publishes or licenses an additional 60 titles distributed in more than 100 countries around the world. Ziff-Davis, a Softbank company, is the also leading publisher of online content about computing and the Internet. With the upcoming debut of its daily, prime time TV show on MSNBC, Ziff-Davis will also become the leading producer of television programming about the digital revolution. As a result, Ziff-Davis is rapidly becoming the leading provider of an integrated system of print, online, and broadcast media that reaches all the audiences with a special interest in computers, the Internet, and digital technologies.
/CONTACT: Greg Jarboe of Ziff-Davis, 617-225-3500 or gjarboe@zd.com, or Nola Armijo of
The JONA Group, 415-552-1515 and nola@jonagroup.com/
09:41 EDT |
