Inside the Numbers

Although the future is always hard to predict, this list ranks companies by projected annualized earnings growth rate over the next 3 to 5 years. First Call Corp. gathers this data by surveying analysts. This list shows only companies that have at least five analysts tracking them. The figures represent a mean of opinion.

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Great Expectations

Companies ranked by analysts’ estimates of average annualized earnings growthover the next three to five years.

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Projected Years of Last annualized positive quarterly Rank Company earn. growth earn/share earn/share 1 Netcom On-Line Comm. Svcs. 91.7% 0 -$0.55 2 Netscape Communics. 75 0 0.03 3 Premisys Communics. 60 2 0.18 4 Qualcomm Inc. 44.6 3 0.02 5 PeopleSoft Inc. 44.3 5 0.2 6 Legato Systems Inc. 42.5 2 0.22 7 Activision Inc. 40 0 0.13 8 DSP Communics. Inc. 40 1 -0.38 9 Pete’s Brewing Co. 40 3 0.07 10 Quarterdeck Corp. 40 1 0.07 11 Dura Pharmaceuticals 38.3 1 -2.88 12 Diamond Multimedia System 37 4 -0.78 13 StrataCom Inc. 37 5 0.2 14 Macromedia 36.7 3 0.2 15 Wonderware Corp. 36.7 4 0.09 16 AirTouch Communics. 35.9 3 0.02 17 Spectrian Corp. 35 1 -0.1 18 XIRCOM Inc. 35 0 0.07 19 Cisco Systems Inc. 34.5 9 0.34 20 Ascend Communics. 32.5 2 0.25 21 Davidson & Assocs. 32.5 5 0.17 22 Integrated Process Eqpmt 32.5 1 -1.32 23 Oracle Corp. 32.1 4 0.22 24 ParcPlace-Digitalk Inc. 31.7 2 0.01 25 Ultratech Stepper Inc. 31.7 4 0.38

No. of Rank analysts 1 10 2 10 3 5 4 11 5 7 6 5 7 6 8 5 9 5 10 5 11 10 12 5 13 14 14 7 15 6 16 12 17 9 18 6 19 30 20 8 21 5 22 7 23 24 6 25 6

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Source: First Call Corp.