By John HendrenTop black-owned businesses showed stronger sales for the fourth straight year, topping revenues for the Fortune 500 and Forbes 500 lists, Black Enterprise magazine reports in its annual ranking.
Sales for the nation's top black-owned businesses rose 11.8 percent last year, according to the magazine's June edition, which hits newsstands May 21.
Growth for the companies on the list surpassed the 9.9 percent revenue jump reported for the same period by companies on Fortune magazine's list and the 10 percent growth tallied by Forbes magazine. The gains came amid declining unemployment and a continuing expansion of the national economy.
The Black Enterprise listing reported total revenues for the 100 largest industrial and service companies and 100 auto dealerships of $13.1 billion, a nearly 12 percent increase over the $11.7 billion reported last year.
That's about equal to sales for Dallas-based Texas Instruments, which ranks 89th on the Fortune 500 list.
''The key word for BE 100s companies was innovation - striving to meet their entrepreneurial mission in ways that they may not have considered or attempted in the past,'' Black Enterprise executive editor Alfred Edmond Jr. said in a statement.
Revenues for companies on the list of industrial and service companies ranged from $18.3 million for engineering company General Scientific Corp. of Arlington, Va., to $2.1 billion for TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc. The New York-based food processor and distributor maintained the top ranking it held last year.
Beatrice sales were followed at a distance by Johnson Publishing Co. of Chicago, with $316 million in sales; Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Co Inc., at $315 million; H.J. Russell & Co., an Atlanta-based construction property management and real estate company, with $173 million; and Pulsar Data Systems Inc. of Lanham, Md., at $165 million.
Michigan hosts the most businesses on the list with 23, followed by Illinois (17), New York (15), Texas (15), Virginia (14), California (13), Georgia (11), Maryland (11) and Ohio (10).
As the national unemployment rate was slightly lower at the end of the year, annual payrolls at top black-owned businesses rose 6.6 percent to 42,386 industrial and service workers and 8,671 auto dealership employees.
Al Smith Chevrolet-Oldsmobile of Brighton, Colo., usurped the top ranking among auto dealers, which are listed separately, that was held in 1994 by Warner Robins Oldsmobile-Cadillac-Pontiac-GMC Truck Inc. of Warner Robins, Ga.
There were 26 new companies on the list in 1995, nine of them industrial and service firms and 17 auto dealerships.
To be eligible for inclusion in the ranking, a company must have been fully operational in the prior calendar year and be at least 51 percent black-owned. In addition, it must make or own the product it sells or provide industrial or consumer services.
May 7, 1996
Return to:Black Business Articles