Business Week lists top 100 companies for 1998. ACRT is on their list. Numerical rank is 80. Criteria:
1998 HOT GROWTH COMPANIES
To win a position in this table, a company must excel in three ways. The selection process begins by ranking companies according to their three-year results in sales growth, earnings growth, and return on
invested capital. The ranks in the table are calculated from these numbers. A company's composite rank is the sum of 0.5 times its rank in return on total capital, plus 0.25 times each of its growth ranks.
Standard & Poor's Compustat, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, which has computerized financial data on 10,000 publicly traded corporations, provided the pool of companies from which
winners were selected. To qualify, a company has to have annual sales of more than $10 million and less than $150 million, a current market value greater than $1 million, a current stock price greater than $5, and be actively traded. Banks, insurers, real estate firms, and utilities are excluded. So are companies with sharp declines in current financial results, as well as companies where other developments raise questions about future performance.
SALES and EARNINGS are the latest available through the most recent 12 months. Earnings include net income from continuing operations, before gains or losses from extraordinary items.
INCREASES in SALES and PROFITS are calculated using the least-squares method. If results for the earliest year are negative, the average is for two years.
RETURN ON CAPITAL is earnings plus minority interests and tax-adjusted interest expense expressed as a percent of total debt and equity. For ranking purposes, the maximum allowable annual return on
invested capital is 100%. If companies have made substantial accounting restatements, long-term returns may be averaged for two years instead of three years.
Time periods vary according to the month of a company's fiscal yearend. Profitability and growth are calculated based on the most recently available data.
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