Two Miles Away

At the very top of the 2015 Barron's 500 is Foster City's Gilead Sciences.

Already a leader in HIV drugs, the company launched Sovaldi, a lifesaving treatment for hepatitis C, in late 2013. It quickly became one of the best-selling drugs in the world, producing $10.3 billion in 2014 revenue. Harvoni, a successor treatment approved in October, contributed another $2 billion in just a few months, helping to cement Gilead’s reputation for birthing biotech blockbusters.

$1,000 invested in Gilead in its 1992 IPO would have grown to over $600,000 today.

Your humble observer, unfortunately, was so enamored with the growth stories occurring elsewhere that he was blind to one that was occurring two miles away.

Before we can seize the opportunity we must first recognize it.

(The Barron's 500 is

is an exclusive ranking of the 500 largest [U.S. and Canada] public companies, measured by sales in the latest fiscal year...it compares companies on the basis of three equally weighted measures:

median three-year cash-flow-based return on investment;

the one-year change in that measure, relative to the three-year median;

and sales growth in the latest fiscal year.)

Gilead's sprawling campus has much larger buildings than its legal address,  333 Lakeside Drive.
On Saturday morning the HQ parking lot is empty while construction crews work nearby.