Deep Dive: These 10 S&P 500 companies increased sales faster than Amazon in a coronavirus-tainted quarter

We’re right in the thick of first-quarter earnings season, and while it is looking bad as consumers and companies suffer from the coronavirus shutdown, there are still companies that are growing rapidly.

Through May 4, 273 companies among the S&P 500 US:SPX had reported earnings for their fiscal quarter ending March 21 or later; 147 of them, or 54%, reported declines in sales from a year earlier. Three months from now, we likely will be looking at even worse results, given that the U.S. economy has borne the brunt of the COVID-19 shutdown in the current quarter. The S&P 500 hit a record high on Feb. 19, and states began issuing stay-at-home orders in the third week of March that are only now beginning to be lifted.

What follows is a list of companies that reported the largest increases in quarterly sales from a year earlier among the 273 S&P 500 companies that reported results through May 4. The list is filtered to exclude companies whose revenue increased significantly because of transformative acquisitions. Those are listed below.

Here’s the filtered list of 12 companies that increased revenue the most:

Company	Ticker	Industry	Increase in quarterly sales from a year earlier	Total return - 2020	Total return - 2019
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.	US:VRTX	Biotechnology	76.9%	21%	32%
Cboe Global Markets Inc.	US:CBOE	Securities exchanges	52.9%	-21%	24%
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.	US:AMD	Semiconductors	40.4%	15%	148%
MarketAxess Holdings Inc.	US:MKTX	Securities exchanges	35.7%	21%	81%
ServiceNow Inc.	US:NOW	Information Technology Services	32.6%	26%	59%
Nasdaq Inc.	US:NDAQ	Securities exchanges	30.2%	0%	34%
CME Group Inc. Class A	US:CME	Securities exchanges	29.0%	-14%	10%
Intercontinental Exchange Inc.	US:ICE	Securities exchanges	28.7%	-3%	24%
Netflix Inc.	US:NFLX	Cable/Satellite TV	27.6%	32%	21%
Prologis Inc.	US:PLD	Real-estate investment Trusts	26.7%	-2%	56%
Amazon.com Inc.	US:AMZN	Internet Retail	26.4%	25%	23%
Intel Corp.	US:INTC	Semiconductors	23.5%	-3%	31%
Source: FactSet

You can click on the tickers for more about each company.

You will need to scroll across the table to see all of the data.

It is no surprise to see Netflix US:NFLX and Amazon.com US:AMZN on the list of rapid first-quarter revenue growers at a time when most people are staying home and most retail businesses are closed.

The increase in securities trading activity starting in the second half of February led to five exchange operators appearing on the list of rapid revenue growers.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals US:VRTX topped the list on the strength of its new Trikafta medication for cystic fibrosis, partially offset by declines in other medications.

Prologis US:PLD and Intel US:INTC both benefited from the continued growth of the datacenter industry.

Read:Nvidia has become a power broker for the next wave of datacenter technology

Here are the companies excluded from the list because their revenue increases mainly resulted from large acquisitions:

• Truist Financial US:TFC is the new name for BB&T after it acquired SunTrust.

• Hasbro US:HAS completed its acquisition of Entertainment One in December.

• Centene Corp. US:CNC acquired WellCare Health Plans in January.

• Principal Financial Group US:PFG acquired Wells Fargo’s institutional retirement management and trust businesses in July 2019.

• Invesco US:IVZ acquired OppenheimerFunds in May 2019.

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