2275 Cabot Drive, Lisle 60532; 630-588-5000
Website: www.wallace.com
Founded: 1908
Employees: 4,131; 1,376 in Illinois
Year-end: July 31
Foreign sales: None of $862.3 million
Chief executive: Robert J. Cronin, 52, since 1992
Cash compensation: $710,359, up 3 percent
Options granted: $302,170, down 23 percent
Options, stock appreciation rights exercised: $85,550
Shares owned: 143,420 of 43 million
Largest shareholder: AIM Management Group, 11 percent
Stock: 365-day close as of April 15, 1997
High: $35.62
Low: $25.25
April 15: $32.75
April 18, 1997 value of $1,000 in company stock:
Purchased April 18, 1996: $1,133
Purchased April 18, 1992: $2,676
At its core, Wallace is a huge printing company that produces goods as diverse as candy-bar wrappers, airline tickets, utility bills, writing tablets and cash register tapes for automated gasoline pumps.
The company now has moved into computer business forms in a big way, creating a mix that made it so attractive that it wound up staving off two hostile takeover bids in the last year.
CEO Cronin told a trade journal the runs made Wallace hasten its move to produce computerized versions of its traditional print products as well as to sell inventory-monitoring computer systems.
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A guide to the Top 100 profiles
The Tribune’s business staff profiles the Chicago area’s Top 100 companies, based on market capitalization as of April 15, 1997. Here’s a quick primer on the information you’ll find.
– The CEO’s cash compensation, including bonus and other compensation paid in 1996, along with the change from the prior year.
– The figure for the CEO’s stock holdings includes shares the CEO had the right to acquire within 60 days of the proxy statement’s issuance.
– The company’s largest shareholder, as listed in the proxy statement.
– Estimated current values of stock options granted the CEO, as reported in the proxy statement, and the change from the prior year, as well as options and stock appreciation rights exercised during the year. In most cases, the current value of options granted is based on the assumption of a 5 percent annual rate of stock price growth.
– Theoretical total-return investment results for shares purchased for $1,000 a year ago and five years ago. The date on which those calculations are based is April 18. The results assume reinvestment of dividends on a quarterly basis.
The information in the profiles was obtained from the following sources:
– Company reports, including annual reports, public stock offering prospectuses and proxy statements.
– Interviews with company officials.
– Reports by securities analysts.
– News reports.
– Dow Jones News/Retrieval, an on-line service of Dow Jones & Co., New York.
– Bloomberg Business News, New York.
– TMS Stocks, a subsidiary of Tribune Media Services Inc., a unit of Tribune Co., Chicago.
– Morningstar Inc., Chicago.
– “First Chicago Guide,” published by Scholl Communications, Deerfield.
– “Hoover’s Handbook,” The Reference Press Inc., Austin, Texas.
