Alza Corp

Alza Corp. agreed to buy Therapeutic Discovery Corp. for $100 million, or $12.30 a share, reacquiring the developer of drug delivery systems that it spun off in 1993. Alza makes and licenses drugs that use novel delivery systems, such as skin patches, and Therapeutic Discovery develops the delivery systems for the drugs. At the time of the spinoff, Alza received an option to buy back Therapeutic Discovery's Class A stock, which represents virtually all of its equity.

Companies ranked by market value, which is stock price times the number of shares outstanding. Also shown: book value, which is a company's theoretical liquidation value, and the market-to-book ratio for each company. *--* 4/18/97 Book Market- '95 market value Value to-book Rank Rank Company (millions) (millions) ratio 1 1 Intel Corp. $112,100 $16,872 6.64% 2 3 Walt Disney Co. 51,817 16,086 3.22 3 2 Hewlett-Packard Co. 50,682 13,438 3.77 4 4 Chevron Corp. 42,223 15,623 2.7 5 BankAmerica Corp.

California-based firms in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, ranked by 52-week stock price change, as of April 18. *--* Rank Company 52 week % change 1 Advanced Micro Devices 113 2 Intel Corp. 109 3 National Semiconductor 85 4 Great Western Fin. Corp. 76 5 Seagate Technology Inc. 56 6 H.F. Ahmanson & Co. 54 7 Clorox Co. 48 8 Times Mirror Co. 43 9 BankAmerica Corp. 38 10 Edison International 37 11 Northrop Grumman Corp. 37 12 Avery Dennison Corp. 34 13 Tandem Computers Inc.

Companies ranked by profit from continuing operations as a % of sales. Rank. Company: 1993 Return % 1. United Television Inc.: 33.6 2. Magma Power: 31.7 3. Franklin Resources Inc.: 27.8 4. Amgen Inc.: 27.3 5. Imperial Credit Indus.: 27.2 6. Intel Corp.: 26.1 7. Cisco Systems: 26.0 8. Linear Technology Corp.: 25.9 9. Pyxis Corp.: 25.5 10. Mercury General Corp.: 24.1 11. Brooktree Corp.: 23.8 12. Foothill Group: 23.1 13. Argonaut Group Inc.: 20.3 14. ALZA Corp.: 19.5 15. CVB Financial: 18.7 16.

Companies ranked by profit from continuing operations as a % of sales. 1992 Rank Company Return % 1 Carter Hawley Hale 38.5 2 Magma Power 33.4 3 Amgen Inc. 32.7 4 ALZA Corp. 31.5 5 Franklin Resources Inc. 30.1 6 N. American Mortgage 27.2 7 Cisco Systems 25.9 8 Collagen Corporation 23.4 9 Linear Technology Corp. 22.5 10 American Residential 22.1 11 Countrywide Credit 21.5 12 Plaza Home Mortgage 21.1 13 W D-40 Co. 19.0 14 McGrath RentCorp 18.6 15 MacNeal-Schwendler 18.6 16 Argonaut Group Inc. 18.