By Jack Hough
If stock returns were the only measure of CEO excellence, we'd be handing out accolades this year like conference-booth pens. Some 37 companies in the S&P 500 have doubled shareholder money over the past year. Another 51 have made at least 50%.
It isn't that simple, of course. An epic boom in data center construction has sent every Tom, Dick, and high-bandwidth memory maker soaring. But which companies have shown the most skill in maximizing the moment, while preparing for what's next? This was one dominant theme in selecting 25 names for our annual Top CEOs list.
There were others.
Tariffs forced supply-chain shuffling. A soaring oil price squeezed household budgets while expanding opportunities for drillers. Cyber threats loomed. Rising bond yields favored nimble financiers. In pharma, a government push to bring down prices coincided with the revolution in obesity treatment. In retail, chains had to manage resilience at the high end with retrenchment at the low.
And this one isn't quite a macro theme, but: Let's go Knicks. Their guy makes our list, and not just because New York last week won its first NBA championship in 53 years.
Our annual selection process isn't a stock-picking exercise. But lofty share prices aren't only acceptable, they are a sign of a job well done. Companies run by last year's winners trailed the market by a couple of percentage points in the past year. Still, they are ahead over three years.
Good managers matter. We gather these names to study which tactics work, in the hope of informing future investment decisions.
Our process begins with the journalism equivalent of zero-based budgeting: We throw last year's honorees off the list to start fresh. First, we screen the market for signs of operational excellence. Next comes neural networking -- we pack a room with noggins attached to editors and reporters to discuss nominations. Then we turn to what any reasonable marriage counselor would call constructive conflict, including rounds of debate, and eventual agreement.
Let's run quickly through the names, which you can find in the table below. Click on each name for more details.
We start where the action is: chips. Jensen Huang at Nvidia has quickened product cycles to stay ahead of the competition for artificial intelligence processors. He's approaching the largest profit in corporate history.
For AI hyperscalers who can save with customized rather than general-purpose chips, Hock Tan at Broadcom is leading a booming trade in application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. Twenty-year stock returns for these two should come with a warning label for the hypertensive: 68,000% for Huang and 34,000% for Tan. Lisa Su took over at Advanced Micro Devices in 2014 and is now pulling past Intel in data centers. AMD is up 10,000% in a decade.
All these zippy chips need to be strung together, and glass is kicking copper's tail at the job, thanks to Corning's Wendell Weeks and his Contour optical fiber. "We reinvented all of our product sets," says Weeks. "We are now able to do on the order of four times as much fiber and connectivity in the same space."
And 25 years after the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" commercials, founding dude Michael Dell has enterprise customers getting Dell AI Factory platforms centered around his servers. AI farms need high-end memory, and Sanjay Mehrotra at Micron Technology is outmaneuvering rivals to meet rabid demand. Corning is up nearly 400% in three years; Dell Technologies, 700%; and Micron, 1,400%.
Let's take a break from the server room and throw on our hard hats. In mining, James Litinsky at MP Materials is giving America a fighting chance against China to supply rare earth magnets for electric vehicles and much more. Darren Woods at Exxon Mobil has driven efficient production growth, and just struck a record stock price. Larry Culp at GE Aerospace has worked with suppliers to increase their production, which has unblocked his assembly lines for highly sought-after aircraft engines.
Sticking with planes, Ed Bastian at Delta Air Lines is pioneering a new kind of airline: the long-term investible one. "People have decided that this product, at least the Delta product, is no longer a commodity," he tells Barron's. Free cash is gushing, despite a jet-fuel price spike, and shares have doubled investor money in three years, 22 points better than the market.
At FedEx, Raj Subramaniam has combined formerly siloed air-based and ground-based businesses, spun off freight, and delivered handsome returns.
In retail, Joanne Crevoiserat at Tapestry, which owns Coach and Kate Spade, has a three-year strategy called Amplify, which involves social-media media marketing, subbrands like Coachtopia for greens, and product extensions like shoes. Darren Rebelez has turned Casey's General Stores from gas stations into kitchens -- and America's fifth-largest pizza chain.
What do these two companies have in common? Three-year returns approaching 300%. TJX under Ernie Herrman has been a double, attracting more high-income shoppers looking for deals.
On to finance: Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase has staffed up with data scientists to thread more automation into risk control and asset management, while leading a comeback for capital markets. David Solomon at Goldman Sachs Group has bolted from consumer banking and embraced helping AI firms raise capital.
Citigroup is a turnaround. Jane Fraser has cut bureaucracy, and reduced low-margin overseas consumer banking in favor of lucrative institutional services. Chubb's Evan Greenberg turned layoffs into machine-learning investments for better insurance underwriting, including for newly built data centers.
More tech, shall we? Apple's Tim Cook has kept hardware and services minting money while buying Siri time by partnering with OpenAI. He steps down Sept. 1, leaving hardware engineer John Ternus in charge. Andy Jassy at Amazon.com has reignited cloud-computing growth with AI for hire. Sundar Pichai has turned Alphabet from a search-first company in AI's crosshairs into a thriving AI merchant. Satya Nadella at Microsoft has undertaken an AI reset, shifting the focus from simple chatbots to deeply embedded workflow automation, while protecting margins from monstrous infrastructure investment.
CrowdStrike Holdings CEO George Kurtz bounced back from a bug two years ago that caused a global computer crash, while rolling out AI agents that can spot and contain attacks much faster than human analysts.
Dave Ricks at Eli Lilly has managed to keep a miracle obesity drug in steady supply -- a manufacturing coup as much as a pharmaceutical one.
And finally, Madison Square Garden Sports is flourishing under CEO Jalen Brunson. No, that's not right. Brunson's title is King of New York, after the undersize point guard dropped 45 points last Saturday to win the Knicks a championship. MSGS, which owns the Knicks and hockey's New York Rangers, is run by James Dolan, who has blessedly turned less handsy on roster-making. It and Dolan's real estate vehicle, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, are suddenly beating the market.
But the biggest winner, Dolan's Sphere Entertainment, which runs a dazzling Las Vegas show globe, has made nearly 300% in a year. A market-beating three-peat? That's Brunson-level scoring.
Write to Jack Hough at jack.hough@barrons.com and subscribe to his Barron's Streetwise podcast.
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 20, 2026 10:31 ET (14:31 GMT)
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