They May Not Sound Hot, But They're Staying On Top

摘要

If you've filled out forms at the doctor's office lately, you'll understand why Quality Systems Inc.'s stock has been on a tear. Doctors and nurses are drowning in a sea of paperwork, and Quality Systems' software can digitize it, from patient data to appointment records to treatment outcomes. Net income for the Irvine (Calif.) company has doubled, to 16 million dollars, in the past two years. As a result, investors have been rewarded with a total return of 232 percent, the best among all Hot Growth companies from our 2004 list. Each year BusinessWeektooks back at how the Hot Growth companies from two years earlier have fared. That allows time to accommodate any business hiccups and make fairer comparisons with indexes. A glance back at the Class of '04 shows that a majority have done pretty darn well. Overall, 64 posted positive returns, compared with 28 in the red. (Eight companies have been merged or acquired.) As a group, the cap-weighted return for the Hot Growth alumni registered 28.3 percent. That's not as high as the small-cap benchmark Russell 2000, which returned almost 40 percent, but it handily beats the 22.7 percent return for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average's 16.3 percent.