The R&D Index for the week ending September 28, 2018 closed at 4,874.79 for the 25 companies in the R&D Index. The Index was up 2.55% (or 121.05 basis points) from the week ending September 21, 2018. The stock of twelve R&D Index companies gained value last week from 0.02% (Astra Zeneca) to 5.02% (Astra Zeneca). The stock of thirteen R&D Index companies lost value last week from -0.09% (IBM) to -6.94% (Daimler).
Advancements in space
Japan’s ispace inc. last week announced that it has reserved space on SpaceX’s moon rockets due to launch in mid-2020. ispace plans to build a business to support a 1,000-person industrial city on the moon by 2040. ispace is funded by two Japanese banks, Suzuki Motors, Toppan Printing and Konica Minolta. The company plans to start with robotic rovers and follow-up with new robots each month starting in 2022. Other companies, including the U.S.’s Astrobotic Technology are also planning similar lunar programs.
Short-term interest
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates at their regularly scheduled meeting last Wednesday, September 26, to a range between 2.00% and 2.25%. This is the third rate hike in 2018, and in its meeting the Fed indicated there will likely be one more rate hike in 2018, probably at their December 18-19 meeting (no meeting scheduled in October). The current rate hike is the first time in a decade that the interest rate will rise to more than the inflation rate, which was 2.0% in July. In addition, Fed officials currently expect to raise interest rates up to three more times in 2019 and once possibly in 2020.
University rankings
The Times Higher Education (THE) 2019 global university rankings were released last week with little change from their 2018 rankings. The Univ. of Oxford, Univ. of Cambridge, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Imperial College London and the Univ. of Chicago maintained their top 10 rankings. Sixty American institutions were included in the top 200 universities, down from 62 in 2018. Seven Chinese universities were in this year’s top 200, the same as last year. The rankings include criteria for engineering and technology, life science, physical science, computer science, education and psychology, among other criteria for teaching, industry income, citations and an international outlook.
Promotions at Daimler
The head of R&D Index member Daimler AG’s R&D division, Ola Kallenius, was promoted last week to CEO of Daimler, the first non-German (Swedish) CEO. Kallenius has headed Daimler’s push into electric vehicles and autonomous self-driving vehicles. He succeeds 12-year CEO Dieter Zetsche, who is expected to become Daimler’s Board Chairman.
| R&D Index Week Ending September 28, 2018 |
| Ticker | Exchange | 2018 R&D millions U.S. $ | 09/21/18 | 09/28/18 | 9/28/18 to 9/21/18 | 9/28/18 to 12/19/17 | ||
| 1 | Amazon | AMZN | NASDAQ | 26,750 | 1,915.01 | 2,003.00 | 4.59% | 71.27% |
| 2 | Alphabet/Google | GOOGL | NASDAQ | 18,796 | 1,172.12 | 1,207.08 | 2.98% | 14.59% |
| 3 | Apple | AAPL | NASDAQ | 14,037 | 217.66 | 225.74 | 3.71% | 33.39% |
| 4 | Intel | INTC | NASDAQ | 13,702 | 46.66 | 47.29 | 1.35% | 2.45% |
| 5 | Microsoft | MSFT | NASDAQ | 13,558 | 114.26 | 114.37 | 0.10% | 33.70% |
| 6 | Roche Pharm | RHHBY | OTC | 12,284 | 30.62 | 30.16 | -1.50% | -4.50% |
| 7 | Johnson & Johnson | JNJ | NYSE | 11,493 | 142.88 | 138.17 | -3.30% | -1.11% |
| 8 | Merck & Co. | MRK | NYSE | 11,323 | 71.10 | 70.94 | -0.22% | 26.07% |
| 9 | Volkswagen AG | VWAGY | OTC | 10,915 | 17.95 | 17.29 | -3.68% | -57.25% |
| 10 | Toyota | TM | NYSE | 10,848 | 124.72 | 124.35 | -0.30% | -2.22% |
| 11 | Novartis | NVS | NYSE | 8,934 | 85.46 | 86.16 | 0.82% | 2.62% |
| 12 | Honda | HMC | NYSE | 8,180 | 30.87 | 30.08 | -2.56% | -11.74% |
| 13 | Pfizer | PFE | NYSE | 7,942 | 44.06 | 44.07 | 0.02% | 21.67% |
| 14 | Daimler | DDAIY | OTC | 7,615 | 67.73 | 63.03 | -6.94% | -25.46% |
| 15 | General Motors | GM | NYSE | 7,278 | 35.32 | 33.67 | -4.67% | -16.27% |
| 16 | Oracle | ORCL | NYSE | 7,001 | 51.10 | 51.56 | 0.90% | 9.05% |
| 17 | Bristol-Myers Squibb | BMY | NYSE | 6,981 | 62.25 | 62.08 | -0.27% | 1.31% |
| 18 | Eli Lilly Co | LLY | NYSE | 6,769 | 106.33 | 107.31 | 0.92% | 27.05% |
| 19 | GlaxoSmithKline | GSK | NYSE | 6,394 | 40.30 | 40.17 | -0.32% | 13.25% |
| 20 | Cisco | CSCO | NASDAQ | 6,009 | 48.56 | 48.65 | 0.19% | 27.02% |
| 21 | IBM | IBM | NYSE | 5,842 | 151.35 | 151.21 | -0.09% | -1.44% |
| 22 | Bayer AG | BAYN | OTC | 5,743 | 22.50 | 22.14 | -1.60% | -28.79% |
| 23 | Astra Zeneca PLC | AZN | NYSE | 5,483 | 37.68 | 39.57 | 5.02% | 14.03% |
| 24 | Qualcomm | QCOM | NASDAQ | 5,183 | 73.70 | 72.03 | -2.27% | 12.51% |
| 25 | Sanofi SA | SNY | NYSE | 4,694 | 43.55 | 44.67 | 2.57% | 3.88% |
| Total | 243,754 | 4,753.74 | 4,874.79 | 2.55% | 28.56% | |||
| Biopharmaceutical | 686.73 | 685.44 | -0.19% | 7.48% | ||||
| Automotive | 276.59 | 268.42 | -2.95% | -17.97% | ||||
| ICT | 1,875.41 | 1,947.93 | 5.31% | 17.53% | ||||
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 2017 were selected based on the latest listings from Schonfeld & Associates’ June 2018 R&D Ratios & Budgets. These 25 companies include pharmaceutical (11 companies), automotive (5), ICT (8) and conglomerate (1) organizations who invested a cumulative total of more than $209 billion in R&D in 2017, or approximately 10% of all the R&D spent in the world by government, industries and academia combined, according to R&D Magazine’s 2018 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 Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Volkswagen AG, Roche Pharma, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, General Motors, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cisco, Qualcomm, Oracle, Honda Motor Company, Astra Zeneca plc, Merck & Company, Daimler, Bayer AG, Sanofi SA, IBM, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly Co. 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 $4.5 and $17 billion annually on their R&D efforts.
