Despite an economy that doesn’t know if it’s the little
engine that could or an elevator in free fall, some encouraging trends
emerged from this year’s HispanicBusiness Fastest-Growing 100 rankings.
Five-year sales growth increased significantly over last
year’s reporting period, jumping from 225.1 percent to 398.4 percent,
while year-over-year revenues rose from just under $11 billion last year
to just over $11.5 billion this year. Productivity was up by an
impressive 18.3 percent.
One troubling figure is the average number of employees,
which dropped from 349 in 2010 to 310 in 2011. The overall trend is
encouraging, however, with five-year employment growth of 65 percent
overall. Leading the way was MasTec Inc., whose staff increased from
8,500 in 2007 to 12,500 in 2011.
MasTec was also the top performer in dollar growth, with revenues increasing from $1.4 billion in 2007 to $3 billion in 2011.
Buckled In
There are a number of reasons why a company
might not appear on the Fastest-Growing 100. Sometimes companies don’t
apply for the HispanicBusiness 500 directory, a requirement for
consideration, while other didn’t declare their 2007 revenues, necessary
to compute their five-year sales growth.
There are other reasons as well. Molina
Healthcare has nabbed itself a spot on the Fortune 500 and did not
participate in this year’s HB500, for instance, and Brightstar’s
five-year growth is still recovering from a drop in revenues of $3.5
billion in 2008 to $2.8 billion in 2009.
Brightstar was once again the No. 1 company
on the HB500, with revenues of $5.7 billion and 4,114 employees.
However, its absence from the Fastest-Growing 100 hindered the
performance of the wholesale sector, which turned in a comparatively
minor increase of $317.2 million from 2007-2011.
The top-performing sector was services, with
growth during the five-year period of $2.8 billion. That accounted for
31.6 percent of revenues on this year’s list, but represented a smaller
share than last year, when the sector accounted for 56.3 percent of
revenues.
Nearly half of the companies on the
Fastest-Growing 100 are service providers, by the way. Automotive pulled
in 7.8 percent of the list’s revenues, despite having only one company,
Greenway Ford Inc., on the list.
Which is not to say that being a service provider gives a company a chance to coast into a slot on the list. They work hard for the recognition. This year’s top company, Link America Inc., which handles forward and reverse logistics for network service providers, topped the 2012 Fastest-Growing 100 with five-year sales growth of 5,117.3 percent, climbing from $4.1 million to $213.9 million.
Related: Link America Climbs High.
Just three states--Texas, Florida and
California--claim half the companies on the list, with 21, 19 and 10,
respectively. Despite being slightly outnumbered, Florida’s
fastest-growing companies had revenue of $6 billion in 2011, compared to
Texas’ $1.9 billion and California’s $192.6 million. Texas companies’
revenue growth in 2011 stood at 377.5 percent, compared to Florida’s
146.3 percent and California’s 103.9 percent.
Regardless of where they’re located, however, the 100 Fastest-Growing 100 companies are buckled in snug for an ongoing wild ride.
