America's Fastest Growing Tech Companies 2013

Finding growth stocks isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is finding growth stocks that don’t fade and are built to outpace their rivals. To identify firms that have proven and sustainable businesses with a pipeline of innovative ideas, FORBES created its list of America’s Fastest Growing Tech Companies, now in its 11th year.

We sift through more than 2,100 publicly traded tech firms, selecting only profitable outfits with a minimum revenue of $150 million and a market cap of at least $500 million. List membership requires sales growth of at least 10% for each of the past three fiscal years and over the last 12 months, as well as estimated earnings growth above 10% over the next three to five years. We then rank the list by three-year average sales growth rate.

Since 2003 a market-cap-weighted basket of each year’s Fast Tech 25 has beaten the Nasdaq, often by a wide margin, except in 2005, 2006 and this past year. This year’s underperformance, during a period when the Nasdaq was up 7%, can be attributed partially to the publication of last year’s list just before a peak in shares of Apple AAPL -1.54%–the company with the largest market cap on the list.

LinkedIn LNKD +4.09% is at the top of our list yet again, and blew away other Fast Tech 25 firms with three- to five-year estimated earnings per share growth of 51%.

America’s Fastest Growing Tech Companies 2013

Rank	Company	Business	Latest 12 Mo. Sales (mil)	Latest 12 Mo. Sales Growth	3-Yr Avg Sales Growth	Est. EPS Growth1
1	LinkedIn	Social Networking	$1,109	80%	102%	51%
2	Facebook	Social Networking	$5,489	36%	87%	25%
3	Apple	Computer Hardware/Software	$169,104	19%	55%	15%
4	3D Systems	3D printers	$378	45%	46%	30%
5	IPG Photonics	Lasers/Amplifiers	$581	17%	46%	26%
6	EPAM Systems	IT Software/Services	$464	30%	43%	25%
7	Shutterstock	Online Commercial Digital Imagery	$183	38%	41%	21%
8	InvenSense	Consumer Electronics	$209	36%	40%	20%
9	Shutterfly	Online Photo Products/Services	$666	31%	39%	16%
10	OpenTable	Online Reservation Services	$168	16%	34%	20%
11	SolarWinds	IT Management Software	$282	31%	32%	25%
12	Cognizant Technology Solutions	Computer Programming Services	$7,656	18%	31%	18%
13	athenahealth	Cloud-based Healthcare Services	$451	29%	31%	27%
14	Ixia	Communications Equipment	$450	43%	30%	15%
15	Equinix	Data Center Services	$1,981	17%	29%	29%
16	Fortinet	Security Systems Services	$552	21%	29%	20%
17	Google	Online Search Engine	$53,499	34%	29%	15%
18	F5 Networks	Communications Equipment	$1,431	13%	28%	15%
19	Rackspace Hosting	Internet Hosting Services	$1,370	25%	28%	24%
20	Vantiv	Payment Processing Services	$1,928	15%	27%	15%
21	Skyworks Solutions	Semiconductors	$1,689	11%	26%	17%
22	Cree	Semiconductors	$1,318	20%	26%	21%
23	Liquidity Services	Online Auctions	$496	25%	25%	17%
24	CommVault Systems	Systems Software	$496	22%	23%	25%
25	Trimble Navigation	Navigation Systems	$2,094	19%	22%	14%