Showing papers by "Bethlehem Steel published in 2005"

Industrial Research Institute's 9th Annual R&D Leaderboard

Abstract: R&D spending by the top 100 U.S. and non-U.S. R&D investors in 2004. In 2003, U.S. industry saw a robust turnaround in R&D spending, with a 5.4 percent increase by the top 100 R&D investors over the previous year. This trend continues. Spending in 2004 by the top 100 U.S. companies increased from 2003 by 7.4 percent to $127 billion. Sales for these same companies increased by 12.4 percent and profits were up another 31.5 percent for the second year in a row! The gains in R&D expense represent a real increase, as the growth significantly outpaced inflation again in 2004 as it did in 2003. The total R&D spending by the top 100 companies shown in Table 1 represents more than two-thirds of all U.S. industry R&D spending, which was about $187 billion in 2004. Microsoft, at the top of the list, spent $7,779 million on R&D in 2004, moving it ahead of Ford which held that position for several years. In 2003, Microsoft was the sixth-largest R&D spender behind Ford, Pfizer, General Motors, IBM, and Johnson and Johnson. However Microsoft's dramatic increase in rank is partly the result of a change in its accounting practices (see "The FASB Directive," below). The rank order of several other companies was also affected by this same change in accounting practice. Three of these-Google, Yahoo, and Symantec-are new additions to the Top 100. The relative spending by the 91 companies that appear among the top 100 R&D spenders for both 2003 and 2004 was only 6.4 percent. However, the nine new additions to the top 100 increased their spending by an average of 62.9 percent. One firm among this group, Biogen-Idec, reported a nearly 195 percent increase in spending, largely the result of Idec's acquisition of Biogen in late 2003. Seven of the nine new additions this year were from either the health care or Internet services industries, including the three noted above. The increase in R&D spending by U.S. industry in 2004 was broad-based, with 76 of the top 100 companies boosting their R&D spending, compared with only 68 in 2003. Of the 24 companies decreasing spending, 11 were continuing their downward spiral from 2003 and earlier. Most of these were in the communications equipment, computer equipment and electronics industries. Among the top 100, the communications equipment industry was the only market segment to exhibit an overall decrease in R&D spending. The largest increases were in the biotech and software industries. R&D Intensity Decreases Despite the overall increase in R&D spending, "R&D intensity" as measured by "R&D expense as a percent of sales," for the top 100, decreased from 5.8 percent in 2003 to 5.6 percent in 2004. This was because sales increased by 12.4 percent, an even greater rate of increase than that of R&D spending. R&D intensity is higher for the top 10 companies (7.2 percent) than for the top 25 companies (7.0 percent) and the latter higher than the top 50 companies (5.7 percent) and that higher than the top 100. This trend continues with the R&D intensity of the top 1,000 companies at 4.3 percent-a reasonable estimate of the R&D intensity for all U.S. industry in 2004. More significant is the great variation in R&D intensity by market segment, with the leaders by this standard being those in the health care, electronics and computer software industries. This same trend and variation is also found in the R&D spending per employee, with the largest R&D spenders as a group investing the greatest amount per company employee. The top 10 companies spend nearly 50 percent more per employee than the average for the top 100. Companies in the biotech, pharmaceutical, electronics, computer hardware and software industries spend much more on R&D per employee than companies in most other industries. Non-U.S. R&D Leaderboard For the first time, we are presenting an R&D Leaderboard composed of only non-U. …