Annual report snapshots and broader stock indexes both show ongoing gains by most control and automation companies, despite specific organizational changes and overall market fluctuations.

Several annual reports showed sales for 1999 generally exceeded sales for 1998. The overall increase was a healthy 8%, though not as robust as 1998, which posted a 20% increase over the previous year. Aggregate profit for all nine firms listed increased about 12% from 1998 to 1999, while profit increased 15% from 1997-98.

While analysis of multi-product or multi-industry companies can be hindered by a lack of divisional performance breakdowns, the recent migration of industrial control companies into large conglomerates makes this task even more difficult. The accompanying charts give a fair year-to-year picture of the industrial controls business since the figures are for divisions or segments that derive their sales either totally, or at least 50%, from discrete control products or from process control systems and products. For the companies shown, these control segments account for about 25% of the parent company total sales.

Some of the larger companies report results in large chunks. For example, for the last three years, Emerson reported 44% of its total sales as "Process Control" and "Industrial Automation." Because the operating profits for these subdivisions aren't reported separately, figures shown here are imputed from the segment margin.