The R&D Index: Market Watch for the week ending April 28, 2017 closed at 1,630.76 for the 25 companies in the R&D Index. The Index was up 2.53% (or 40.21 basis points) over the week ending April 21, 2017. Only two R&D Index companies lost value last week from -0.06% (IBM) to -0.47% (Intel). Twenty-three R&D Index companies gained value last week, from 0.21% (Eli Lilly) to 7.98% (Bayer AG).

Research on self-driving vehicles was in the news last week from a variety of aspects. Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent, Alphabet, continued its accusations of Uber copying its design plans for a laser sensor used in autonomous vehicles. The accusations involve failing to reveal the technologies in federal dispositions and claim the theft of trade secrets from Waymo to jump start Uber’s self-driving system development. A former Waymo employee who left Waymo in January 2016 is stated as taking 14,000 Waymo files when he left and then developing similar technologies for Uber.

R&D Index member Apple was also revealed last week to be seen testing self-driving Lexus vehicles in California last week. Apple had previously been granted a license to test such vehicles by the state. Analysts note that the Apple vehicle is utilizing mostly off-the-shelf components for its vehicle and is primarily testing its in-house developed software. The research team conducting the Apple tests consist of roboticists who previously worked for NASA. Apple joins other research teams from Ford, GM, Uber, Tesla and Google who are aggressively pursuing the future multi-trillion-dollar market for their share of the autonomous vehicle market. Apple is estimated to have more than 1,000 researchers working on their autonomous vehicle project—code named Titan.

The U.S. Dept. of Defense last week stated the need for faster development of offensive weapons and combat tactics for space (rather than just defensive), primarily to protect the biggest, most expensive and most sophisticated U.S. spy satellites from potential attacks. The USAF has been working for many years with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to devise offensive strategies against weapons that could blind, jam or destroy these satellites. Research funding for these combined offensive and defensive efforts is expected to be increased over the next several years to challenge adversaries.

Apple’s legal dispute with Qualcomm over excessive royalty rates has resulted in Apple withholding  royalty payments and Qualcomm reducing its 2017 profit projections by as much as 80%. Qualcomm was expected to spend as much as $6 billion on R&D in 2017 which is now at risk of being reduced.

R&D Index Week Ending April, 28, 2017

	Ticker	Exchange	2015 R&D billions$	04/21/17	04/28/17	4/28/17 to 4/21/17	4/28/17 to 1/1/16
Microsoft	MSFT	NASDAQ	12,448	66.40	68.46	3.10%	23.40%
Intel	INTC	NASDAQ	12,128	36.32	36.15	-0.47%	4.93%
Roche Pharm	RHHBY	OTC	10,242	31.60	32.70	3.48%	-5.13%
Toyota	TM	NYSE	9,112	106.58	108.14	1.46%	-12.11%
Johnson & Johnson	JNJ	NYSE	9,046	121.76	123.47	1.40%	20.20%
Novartis	NVS	NYSE	8,935	73.40	77.03	4.95%	-10.51%
Apple	AAPL	NASDAQ	8,397	142.27	143.65	0.97%	36.47%
Pfizer	PFE	NYSE	7,690	33.64	33.92	0.83%	4.72%
General Motors	GM	NYSE	7,500	33.75	34.64	2.64%	1.85%
Merck & Co.	MRK	NYSE	6,704	61.89	62.33	0.71%	18.00%
Ford Motor	F	NYSE	6,700	11.34	11.47	1.15%	-18.59%
Cisco	CSCO	NASDAQ	6,411	32.82	34.06	3.78%	25.40%
Oracle	ORCL	NYSE	6,042	44.43	44.96	1.19%	23.08%
Astra Zeneca PLC	AZN	NYSE	5,997	29.76	30.25	1.65%	-10.90%
Honda	HMC	NYSE	5,990	28.52	29.10	2.03%	-8.86%
Bristol-Myers Squibb	BMY	NYSE	5,920	53.48	56.05	4.81%	-18.53%
Qualcomm	QCOM	NASDAQ	5,833	52.50	53.74	2.36%	7.52%
Sanofi SA	SNY	NYSE	5,519	44.09	47.30	7.28%	10.90%
Eli Lilly Co	LLY	NYSE	5,331	81.89	82.06	0.21%	-2.59%
GlaxoSmithKline	GSK	NYSE	5,250	40.78	40.90	0.29%	1.36%
IBM	IBM	NYSE	5,247	160.38	160.29	-0.06%	16.51%
Daimler	DDAIY	OTC	5,169	66.17	68.40	3.37%	-12.20%
Siemens	SIE	XETRA	4,929	125.35	131.60	4.99%	46.42%
Bayer AG	BAYN	XETRA	4,649	105.20	113.60	7.98%	-2.24%
Ericsson	ERIC	NASDAQ	4,124	6.23	6.49	4.17%	-32.47%
		Total	175,313	1590.55	1630.76	2.53%	7.18%
		Biopharmaceutical		677.49	699.61	3.26%	0.71%
		Automotive		246.36	251.75	2.19%	-10.40%
		ICT		535.12	541.31	1.16%	21.25%

About the R&D Index

R&D Magazine’s R&D Index is a weekly stock market summary of the top international companies involved in research and development. The top 25 industrial spenders of R&D in 2015 were selected based on the latest listings from Schonfeld & Associates’ June 2016 R&D Ratios & Budgets. These 25 companies include pharmaceutical (11 companies), automotive (5), ICT  (7) and conglomerate (2) organizations who invested a cumulative total of more than $175 billion in R&D in 2015, or approximately 11% of all the R&D spent in the world by government, industries and academia combined, according to R&D Magazine’s 2016 Global R&D Funding Forecast. The stock prices used in the R&D Index are tabulated from NASDAQ, NYSE, XETRA and OTC common stock prices (in U.S. dollars) for the companies selected at the close of stock trading business on the Friday preceding the publication of the R&D Index in R&D Magazine’s R&D Daily eNewsletter.

The companies used in the R&D Index include Microsoft, Intel, Roche Holdings, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Toyota Motor, General Motors, Merck & Co., Ford Motor, Cisco, Apple Computer, Sanofi SA, Qualcomm, IBM, Astra Zeneca plc, Honda Motor, Daimler, Oracle, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens, Eli Lilly Co., Ericsson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Bayer AG. Stock prices are based on those stocks traded on the U.S. exchanges. R&D Index trends (in the stock prices) are just one indicator of the amount of capital available to these high-technology companies to invest in R&D and should not be implied to indicate the absolute value of R&D investments made by these organizations. The companies chosen for the R&D Index have very large sophisticated internal and global R&D organizations with each company investing between $4.1 and $12.4 billion annually on their R&D efforts.