While there's no shortage of ink and pixels being spilled over
the fact that Yahoo's (
YHOO
) new CEO Marissa Mayer is the first pregnant head of a Fortune
500 company, the only Mayer delivery that should matter to
investors is improved performance for Yahoo's stock.
YHOO
data by
YCharts
And all the chatter aside, based on revenue, Mayer is way down
the list of female CEOs. There are currently 19 female CEO's
running Fortune 500 companies -- yep, a paltry 3.8% -- and
Mayer's Yahoo is the second to last on that list, and #483 in the
overall rankings
. And though hints to
Mayer's approach
at Yahoo are starting to emerge, it's early to suggest whether
she can turn the company around or not.
Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard (
HPQ
) is the highest ranking female CEO on the Fortune 500 list at
#10. Whitman, who stepped into the CEO office last September
handily beats Mayer as chief of Silicon Valley's biggest basket
case.
YHOO
data by
YCharts
Joining Whitman in the ranks of women running the 100 largest
U.S. corporations are:
19. Virginia Rometty: IBM (
IBM
)
28. Patricia Woertz: Archer Daniels Midland (
ADM
)
41. Indra Nooyi: PepsiCo (
PEP
)
45. Angela Braly: Wellpoint (
WLP
)
40. Irene Rosenfeld : Kraft (
KFT
)
72. Ellen Kullman: DuPont (
DD
)
IBM
data by
YCharts
Wellpoint and Archer-Daniels Midland aren't thrilling Wall
Street lately. WellPoint's early July announcement that it would
pay nearly $5 billion to scoop up managed care provider
Amerigroup triggered the recent sell-off. Longer-term, Braly's
tenure hasn't delivered robust returns either.
WLP
data by
YCharts
Things have played out similarly at Archer-Daniels Midland,
where the stock price has trailed the S&P 500 since Woertz
took over in the spring of 2006.
ADM
data by
YCharts
Given that Rometty just took over this past January at IBM,
it's too early to measure her impact on the company's bottom
line. Let's just say Yahoo's Mayer would surely love to be
inheriting IBM's trend lines:
IBM Revenue Per Share TTM
data by
YCharts
Kraft has outperformed the broad market since Rosenfeld took
over in mid 2006. The next challenge is how the market responds
to the planned 2012 split of the company into two public
companies: one focusing on snack brands-which Rosenfeld will
continue to run-and the other covering the food giant's North
American grocery business.
KFT
data by
YCharts
During Nooyi's tenure as PepsiCo's chief (she took over in the
fall of 2006) the stock has managed to best the S&P 500, but
seriously lags Coca-Cola (
KO
).
PEP
data by
YCharts
The strongest stock gains among the female CEOs in the Fortune
100 goes to DuPont. Kellman formally took over the CEO slot in
January 2009.
DD
data by
YCharts
That's a delivery worth talking about.
Carla Fried is an editor for the
YCharts Pro Investor Service
which includes professional
stock charts
,
stock ratings
and
portfolio strategies
.