Boom, Bust & Bankruptcy: How America's Biggest Companies Performed In Forbes' First 100 Years
Antoine Gara , Forbes Staff
This story appears in the September 28, 2017 issue of Forbes. Subscribe
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Among America's top 100 companies when Forbes was founded, Procter & Gamble has gained the most.
Only 12 of the original 100 largest U.S. companies of 1917 have lasted a century under the same name. The survivors-- General Electric GE -0.33%, AT&T T +0.49%, Ford and Dupont--have defined American industry and innovation.
Despite the high attrition rate, anyone smart and wealthy enough to have invested $1,000 in each of top 100 public companies in 1917 would now have a portfolio worth $26.6 million--based on price appreciation alone. The 5.8% compounded annual return slightly exceeds that of the 30 stocks of Dow Jones Industrial average. And if you were to add in dividends accrued, the result would likely be 10% annually, or as much as $1 billion. The inflation rate over the last 100 years averaged 3%.
The star of the original list is Procter & Gamble PG +0.19%. An initial investment of $1,000 would have appreciated in value to $1.6 million. (Including dividends, the amount would be at least $50 million.)
Most companies shape-shifted through mergers and breakups, but government meddling played a big part in returns. American Telephone & Telegraph, known to Boomers as Ma Bell, was forced to split into eight companies in 1984. Owners of the original company now also own shares in Verizon, Comcast CMCSA -1.51%, CenturyLink CTL -0.88% and Nokia . Likewise, John Rockefeller's Standard Oil was broken into dozens of companies in 1911, ten of which were among America's 100 largest companies at Forbes' 1917 founding. Today those "Standards" reside inside Exxon Mobil, Chevron CVX +0.24%, BP and Sinclair Oil .
Investors in Sears, Roebuck have done well despite a 90% plunge in the stock since 2007. A thousand invested would be $691,000 thanks to spinoffs such as Allstate ALL +0.03% and Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley MS +0.08%). Kodak went bankrupt in 2012, but its 1994 spinoff of Eastman Chemical EMN +2.78% means 1917 shares are now worth $138,200. As for the railroads, Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and Southern Pacific were lousy investments for decades, but there's hope: Shares have morphed into Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B +0%, managed by the century's best investor, Warren Buffett.
Methodology: Assumes $1,000 invested in America's biggest companies by assets in 1917. Includes spin-offs but excludes cash distributions like dividends. Our figures are based off of decades of research at Forbes, including work done for our 75th anniversary issue. To keep track of distributions and stock splits since 1992, Forbes was helped by NetWorthServices, a Phoenix-based fintech company that offers a product called NetBasis, which many large corporations use to track executive stock options.
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