Subprime Card Issuer Number 2 on Fortune 100 Fastest-Growing Companies List

NEW YORK – FORTUNE announced today its 17th annual list of the 100 Fastest- Growing Companies. Topping the ranking is Yahoo, the Sunnyvale, California Internet company that is riding the online advertising boom. Rounding out the top ten are Compucredit (No. 2), the provider of branded credit cards to the subprime market; Ceradyne (No. 3), which makes high-tech ceramics, including in-demand military armor; Vineyard National Bancorp (No. 4), the Southern California bank that is benefiting from the real estate boom; Laserscope (No. 5), which makes medical laser systems for prostate treatment and cosmetic procedures; KOS Pharmaceuticals (No. 6), whose cholesterol and asthma drugs pump up earnings; ASV (No. 7), the maker of rubber-track earth-movers for farm use, landscaping, and construction; Sandisk (No. 8), the largest maker of memory cards for digital cameras and cellphones; Imergent (No. 9), which provides Web services for small businesses; and Clinical Data (No. 10), which provides blood and urine testing equipment to doctors’ offices. (Only companies with three years of results are included, so that other hot Internet firm, Google, was not eligible.) The Fastest-Growing list and related stories appear in the September 9 issue of FORTUNE, available on newsstands August 29 and at www.fortune.com on August 22.

“Yahoo’s return from the land of the dot-com dead has been well documented in this magazine,” says FORTUNE senior writer Jon Birger in his introduction to the list. “CEO Terry Semel wooed back the big advertising agencies Yahoo’s old management had brashly tried to bypass. Meanwhile, the proliferation of broadband Internet access and a widening array of Yahoo content made it possible for advertisers to target Yahoo’s 120 million monthly visitors in ever more sophisticated ways. The result has been a transformation of online advertising as well as of Yahoo’s bottom line.”

The list has changed dramatically over the past five years, reflecting the evolution of the U.S. economy. Technology is still well-represented, but the real story is energy. Nineteen oil companies—all of them basking in the $2.60 a gallon Americans are paying at the pump—are among FORTUNE’s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies for 2005. Housing is another hot industry. Four homebuilders, three mortgage lenders, and two Florida land developers made the list this year.

Older companies also made a strong showing. “Something that struck us about this year’s Fastest-Growing list is that it’s no longer the corporate all-rookie team,” says Birger. “Among the 100, 54 have been publicly traded for at least ten years, and 16 are among the 100 best- performing U.S. stocks of the past decade.”

To compute the rankings, FORTUNE uses data from Zacks Investment Research and give equal weight to three factors: profit and sales growth (for three years through the first quarter of 2005) and three-year total return (through June).