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It's awards season here at Yahoo Finance!

Yahoo Finance has been releasing its coveted Company of the Year award since 2014. 

Our newsroom has done some amazing work reporting on the annual award across text, video, social media, and infographics. In many instances, we've profiled companies before they became household names. 

In 2014, for example, we gave the award to what was then a scrappy workout apparel company named Under Armour (UA) as it was shaking up its industry. Last year, the award went to weight-loss drug and insulin supplier Novo Nordisk (NVO) for its life-changing work and stock price performance. 

We don’t take the decision of who wins lightly, and names are thoroughly discussed by our editorial leaders.

The winner must fulfill several criteria laid out by our veteran team of news and investing lovers. These criteria range from stock price performance and financial performance to leadership effectiveness and a couple of intangibles. 

This year, we thought, why not throw some gas on this annual ritual and expand our awards franchise?

So we have done just that.

Starting Monday morning and continuing through Thursday, we'll reveal a winner in the following categories:

• Company of the Year

• Comeback of the Year

• Surprise of the Year

• Product of the Year

There will be a host of exclusive interviews and content shared across Yahoo Finance video (which you can stream on desktop, our app, and all major streaming platforms) and our podcasts from sunup to sundown. 

The fun begins live on the Opening Bid podcast at 8:30 a.m. ET on Monday from the Nasdaq in Times Square. The feature leadership interviews will drop online at 6 a.m. ET each morning. 

I can tell you there were a host of big companies in the running to secure the awards, such as Nvidia (NVDA), Walmart (WMT), General Motors (GM), Palantir (PLTR), Caterpillar (CAT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and many others. 

In all cases, these are companies that are changing the way you think about living, doing business, and investing. And they have leaders continuing to push the envelope on what's possible. Higher stock prices help their cases too — regardless of if their CEOs are watching their ticker pages on Yahoo Finance. 

"I'm aware [of the stock price]. I try not to focus on that too much. It's the inputs that drive the outputs, and I spend my time on the inputs," one of the CEOs I interviewed for the award told me. 

So be sure to tune into Yahoo Finance starting Monday for the big reveals and full day of in-depth coverage by our newsroom. Trust me, you won't want to miss this!

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn. Tips on deals, mergers, activist situations, or anything else? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.

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