Our Company of the Year isn’t necessarily the company of the decade.

Costco (COST) is the 11th annual Yahoo Finance Company of the Year (COTY). And a deserving one. But a look back at the list of prior winners contains a sobering lesson: greatness doesn’t always last.

Our first COTY selection, for example, was Gap (GPS), in 2012. Believe it or not, the denim retailer was enjoying a resurgence back then, with the stock surging from 2011 to 2014. Since then, however, Gap has become the poster child for the old-school retail apocalypse, closing hundreds of stores, churning through CEOs and even inking a regrettable deal with one of the incarnations of Kanye West. Since peaking in 2014, the shares are down nearly 70%.

Another stumbler, our 2013 selection, Disney (DIS), is still a blue-chip firm. But it hit a rough patch under the leadership of now-departed CEO Bob Chapek. His predecessor, Bob Iger, is now at the helm once more, and he has a lot of fixing to do. Profits are well below pre-Covid levels and the stock is down 35% this year, more than twice the drop in the S&P 500 stock index.

Then there's former high rider Under Armour (UA). Itseemed poised to become the next Nike when it claimed the 2014 best-company title. But it missed the athleisure trend, lost high-profile endorsers and endured management problems. The company's value, meanwhile, has dropped from a peak of $22 billion in 2015 to less than $4 billion today.

Another disappointment: Facebook (META), our 2015 winner. In 2021, Yahoo Finance readers face-palmed the company, now Meta, by voting it worst company of the year. What irked investors then was a stream of controversy over Facebook allowing bogus content on the site and/or blocking certain political points of view. This year’s woes include a wrong turn into the “metaverse,” where nobody except CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to hang out. The company laid off 11,000 workers in November, and the stock is down 67% from its 2021 peak. Once a rare trillion-dollar company, Meta is now worth less than $300 billion.