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The recovery from that low has been rapid

TAKING STOCK

By Tim Raetzloff

For the Beacon

In case you missed the celebration, the Abarim Snohomish County Stock Index is now 15 years old.

Back on Nov. 21, 2008, I reported that the ASCSI had suffered its worst year ever. Last year on that date the combined market capitalization of the 11 ASCSI companies was $2.239 billion.

Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the value of one share by the number of shares outstanding.

This year was better, although it may not have seemed so as we went through it. Today the combined market capitalization of the 11 ASCSI companies is $2.926 billion, a gain of 31 percent.

Snohomish County is up, but it has been a rough year. On March 9, the ASCSI reached its all-time low.

But the recovery from that low has been rapid. Snohomish County is up 67 percent in less than nine months!

The Big Four companies in Snohomish County are Seattle Genetics at $928 million in market capitalization; Intermec at $787 million; SonoSite at $404 million; and Zumiez at $368 million dollars.

This is only the second year in the last 12 years that no company in Snohomish County has a market capitalization of $1 billion or more. Seattle Genetics was above the billion-dollar mark for much of the last three months, but failed to post that mark on the ASCSIs anniversary.

This year there are 11 ASCSI companies; a year ago there were only 10.

We lost one of the notable names in Snohomish County this year, Frontier Financial. Frontier shares have traded under $1 for much of 2009, and Frontier does not qualify for inclusion in the ASCSI at this time.

Frontier is one of five Snohomish County companies that have had a market capitalization of $1 billion or more at some time in the past. The others are ICOS, Intermec, Zumiez and Seattle Genetics.

Newcomers in the ASCSI are MDRNA and Neah Power Systems. MDRNA is not exactly new; it is descended from Nastech Pharmaceuticals, a long-time ASCSI company.

The 15th year of the ASCSI was a definite improvement over the 14th year. Heres hoping that the trend continues.

The 11 companies in the Abarim Snohomish County Stock Index are:

Cardiac Science, Cascade Financial, CityBank, CombiMatrix, Intermec, MDRNA, Neah Power Systems, OncoGenex, Seattle Genetics, SonoSite and Zumiez.

(Tim Raetzloff operates Abarim Business Computers at Five Corners in Edmonds. He evaluates Puget Sound business activity for his newsletter, and his column appears regularly in the Beacon. In the interests of full disclosure he says, Neither I nor Abarim have any interest or conflict with any company mentioned in this column.)