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Technology companies may get all the glitz and glamour, but the region's non-tech companies include some household names as well.
"These non-tech industries might not be as dynamic or as exciting as what is going on in tech," said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Business Forecasting Center at University of the Pacific. "But they are significant economic drivers."
In addition to the SV150, this newspaper has created a new list this year, the Bay Area 25, a list of the 25 largest non-technology companies in the Bay Area ranked by revenue. San Ramon-based Chevron tops the list -- and is the biggest company on either list -- followed by San Francisco-based McKesson and Wells Fargo, Pleasanton-based Safeway and San Francisco-based PG&E.
The list also includes San Francisco-based Gap, URS and Visa, Pleasanton-based Ross Stores and South San Francisco-based Core-Mark.
Further down the list are companies with such iconic monikers as Oakland-based Clorox and San Francisco-based Charles Schwab, Williams-Sonoma and First Republic Bank.
Some companies in the top 25 whose names might not be immediately recognizable nonetheless have products and services that are well known.
Franklin Resources offers the Franklin Templeton family of mutual funds. Robert Half is a big temporary services firm. Central Garden & Pet sells Amdro fire ant bait, Four Paws animal products, Kaytee bird seed, Nylabone dog chews and Pennington grass seed. Cooper Cos. sells the CooperVision line of contact lenses.
"These non-tech companies are very key to the Bay Area and Northern California," said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive and founder of Walnut Creek-based Destination Wealth Management. "They provide a real foundation for the Bay Area."
Compared to the Silicon Valley 150, the Bay Area 25 non-technology companies have posted, as a group, sharply differing trends in sales and profits, according to this newspaper's analysis of the largest public companies in the Bay Area.
Sales for the largest non-technology companies in the region are rising much more slowly than those of tech companies. But profits for non-tech firms are rising much swiftly.
During 2011, sales for non-tech companies rose 12 percent compared with 2010, while sales for the SV150 rose 17 percent over the same 12-month stretch.
Aggregate sales for the top 25 non-tech companies totaled $593.98 billion, or an average per-company revenue of $11.88 billion. Combined sales for the SV150 totaled $618.54 billion, an average per-company revenue of $4.12 billion.
Aggregate profits for non-tech companies jumped 31 percent, well ahead of the 22 percent growth in profits for the SV150.
Combined profits for the Bay Area 25 totaled $54.36 billion, or an average of $1.09 billion per company. The SV150 produced an average profit of $674 million.
But those numbers are somewhat distorted by the fact that the non-tech group is so dominated by Chevron.
The energy behemoth generated $236.29 billion in revenue, or just a shade under 40 percent of the combined sales for the entire non-tech sector. And Chevron's profit of $26.9 billion represented 49 percent of the aggregate profits for the non-tech sector.
Even Cupertino-based Apple (AAPL) doesn't overshadow the SV150 to the extent that Chevron does its peer group. Apple's revenue accounted for 20.7 percent of the SV150 sales total, while its profit amounted to 32.6 percent of the total for the group.
Non-tech companies provide the Bay Area with crucial diversity and help cushion the region against the boom-bust cycles of the tech sector.
"Tech is more exciting, but if we only had technology companies, we would only have complete euphoria or utter depression," Yoshikami said.
Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.
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