Despite - or maybe because of - tough competition in the grocery industry, Publix Super Markets continues to thrive as the largest private company based in Florida and one of the top five in the nation.
Among private companies - those not traded on public markets or whose stock ownership is tightly restricted - Lakeland's Publix ranked No. 9 countrywide in 1996 with $9.4-billion in revenues and 95,000 employees. Now it ranks No. 4 in the nation with $16-billion in revenues and 123,000 employees. So says the annual look at America's biggest private companies that appears in the Nov. 24 issue of Forbes magazine.
Publix's long-term staying power is impressive, even if it recently chalked up a $30-million expense in closing its unsuccessful Internet grocery business. Wal-Mart Superstores - which include grocery stores inside - are cropping up in major metro areas across the state, quickly gobbling up market share and playing havoc with other grocery chains. Publix, so far, is holding its own.
Publix, in fact, is not far behind the revenues of Florida's biggest publicly traded companies. AutoNation in Fort Lauderdale is the state's biggest with annual revenues near $20-billion. The Tampa Bay area's largest public company, Clearwater tech equipment distributor Tech Data Corp., is fighting global pressure on technology sales and just barely ahead of Publix in revenues.
Altogether, Florida is home to seven private companies with annual revenues topping $1-billion, says Forbes. No. 2 JM Family Enterprises, a Deerfield Beach auto services company, is less than half Publix's size in revenues, and the remaining private Florida companies are, in turn, significantly smaller.
Over time, the Forbes list of major private companies in Florida tells a tale of the state's shifting economy.
In the mid to late 1990s, many of Florida's biggest private companies were family-run auto dealerships, including Ed Morse Automotive Group and Potamkin Cos., or such big Tampa businesses as Lykes Bros. and Spalding and Evenflo. Some of these companies were bought, while others were spun off, dismantled, involved in bankruptcy or simply shrunken to meet various financial and family demands.
One Tampa company that blossomed on the Forbes list in 2000 is Epix Holdings, a so-called professional employer organization, or PEO, that handles payroll, benefits and human resources for thousands of smaller companies in the country. (Epix was formed in 1998 through the merger of Tampa's Payroll Transfers Inc. and Employee Management Inc. of Woodbridge, N.J.)
Epix is no longer on the Forbes list. That's the result, the magazine says, of an accounting discussion with Epix and a decision that the Tampa company's revenues are technically smaller - well below the $1-billion threshold - than Forbes previously thought.
One very real story here is the changing makeup of the seven Florida companies on the latest Forbes list. A few observations:
Of the five private companies that have appeared more than once on the Forbes list, every one of them has climbed in the nationwide rankings. In addition to Publix's rise from from No. 9 in 1996 to No. 4, JM Family Enterprises rose from No. 27 in 1996 to No. 15. Southern Wine rose from No. 60 in '96 to No. 28 this year.
Also, Purity Wholesale Grocers, No. 282 in 1996, is now No. 126. And furniture juggernaut Rooms to Go, which has dual headquarters outside Tampa in Seffner and in Atlanta, first appeared on the Forbes list in 1998 at No. 380. It's now at 196.
The remaining two on the list of seven Florida companies are new to the rankings. For good reason.
Fast food giant Burger King just qualified this year as a private Florida company. In late 2002, British liquor company Diageo PLC agreed to sell Miami's Burger King to a U.S investment consortium led by private dealmaker Texas Pacific Group. Burger King debuts this year at No. 239, based on a Forbes estimate of $1.1-billion in annual revenues.
Finally, the seventh Florida company to make the list is a relative newcomer to the state. But it's a familiar name.
In 2001, Boar's Head Provisions Co. Inc. relocated its headquarters from Brooklyn, N.Y., to downtown Sarasota. The provider of hundreds of kinds of deli meats was apparently drawn to Florida because Publix had become one of its major customers. Publix had agreed to sell only one brand - Boar's Head - plus its own house brand of deli meats.
The result? A new private company in Florida that Forbes estimates has revenues just topping $1-billion.
As for Boar's Head, founded in Brooklyn almost a century ago by Frank Brunckhorst, it prefers to enjoy its privacy. When the company's new hometown paper came calling in 2001 for a business profile, Boar's Head was tight-lipped.
"We don't encourage this kind of coverage," Boar's Head spokeswoman RuthAnn LaMore told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune at the time. "We're a unique company when it comes to PR: We don't do any."
I guess that makes one more perk to running a company that is private: privacy.
