54.7 F
Laguna Hills
Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024
-Advertisement-

Three Amigos

They say it’s lonely at the top, but if you invite a few friends it can get downright clubby.

That’s the situation on the Business Journal’s list of OC’s largest private companies ranked by annual revenue.

Pacific Life Insurance Co. in Newport Beach, Kingston Technology Co. in Fountain Valley, and Golden State Foods Corp. in Irvine are the three largest private companies based here—each with 2016 revenue that topped $6 billion (see list, page 24).

PacLife’s 2016 revenue was up about 7% to more than $9 billion.

Jim Morris—chairman, president and chief executive of the financial services and insurance provider—said via email that results “were driven by strong investment performance,” with assets up 4% to a “highest-ever” $143 billion, and called out the firm’s growth even “in the current low interest rate environment.”

Kingston and Golden State Foods swapped slots from last year’s list—the result of an early 2016 asset sale by the latter that altered its revenue for the full year—but for at least the last eight years the three have led the pack of OC private firms.

Wingmen

Technology firm Kingston makes memory products, including being the second-largest supplier of solid-state drives, a growing market segment (see story, page 1). We put Kingston’s annual revenue at about $6.6 billion, good for No. 2 on the list.

Golden State delivers food and other products to 125,000 restaurants in 60 countries on five continents. GSF reported revenue of $6.1 billion, down 16% from last year’s $7.3 billion.

It sold its stake in a “multi-billion produce business … early in 2016,” said Chief Administrative Officer Bill Sanderson via email. Revenue was “relatively flat year-over-year without that transaction” and accounting for currency fluctuations.

Coup

To get a good sense of the trend lines, we went back to our 2010 Private Companies list; that also coincided with the first full year of revenue—2009—following the start of the real estate recession.

PacLife has been No. 1 every year, save one.

Kingston toppled PacLife on the 2011 list with a 59% growth spurt in annual revenue in 2010. It reported $6.5 billion in revenue compared with PacLife’s 8% revenue increase to $5.8 billion.

The real estate crash was two years in the rear-view mirror, and an improving economy gave Kingston a big boost in memory module sales to original equipment manufacturers, said Public Relations Manager David Leong in an email.

“Flash memory, especially storage cards [for] smartphones” kicked-in, too. Kingston also grew in both overall shipping volume and higher average selling prices, Leong said.

Golden State Foods was No. 3 that year with $4.6 billion in revenue, up nearly 12%.

Re-throned

PacLife retook the crown on the 2012 list with 15% growth to nearly $6.7 billon; Kingston dropped to No. 2, and Golden State Foods was No. 3.

The following year—and each year thereafter through Golden State’s asset sale in 2016—the ranking was PacLife, Golden State Foods and Kingston.

The three combine on this year’s list for nearly $22 billion in revenue—one-fourth of the list’s total.

PacLife, for its part, looks to retain its top perch for some time. Its slow-and-steady pace—generally 2% to 9% annual revenue growth—is due to “great relationships with our distribution partners, a commitment to serving clients, and investment in the development of new products,” Morris told us.

King Them

Perennial top-performers on the list include:

• No. 4, Automobile Club of Southern California, whose 2016 revenue motored 8% higher to $5.4 billion

• No. 5, Vizio Inc.—still private after a planned sale fell through and a rumored initial public offering didn’t materialize

• No. 7, Irvine Company, the largest owner of apartments and commercial real estate in California

Two companies cracked the top 10 this year—Allied Universal, a security systems provider at No. 6 (see story, page 31) and Alorica, an operator of customer-service call centers (see story, page 20)—which underscores the chance for movement even at the upper echelons of OC private firms.

The 10 largest private companies by our reckoning had $45 billion in revenue last year—half the list’s total.

The stability in the triumvirate at the top is in some contrast to the rest of the 10 largest listed firms, and our entire list of 112. Even with few major changes from year to year, there’s usually something new—a sale, an IPO, a major market shift.

It’s good to be the kings.

Want more from the best local business newspaper in the country?

Sign-up for our FREE Daily eNews update to get the latest Orange County news delivered right to your inbox!

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-