The Florida Trend 350 Biggest Companies in Florida
Revenue at Florida's 150 largest public companies and 200 biggest private companies rose 8.5% and 8.8% respectively, reflecting improving economic conditions. Lower home prices and a glut of supply, however, continued to take a toll on construction companies. Nine of the 13 private companies showing the biggest drop in the rankings are related to real estate — 10 if you count an electrical contractor.
Overall, 30% of the public companies on our list reported lower revenue — 105 had gains, and 45 had declines. On the private side, the percentage of revenue decliners was a bit higher at 39% — 123 up and 77 down.
| Florida Trend's Top |
Would you like to order a copy of the June Top 350 magazine? If so, Other notes:
• While the private list has 50 more companies than the public, revenue at the 150 public companies is $89.9 billion higher.
• The 150th company on the public list had revenue of $3 million, the same as in the previous year. Among the privates, the cutoff was $13 million higher this year.
» Preview the Top 150 Public Companies
» Read more about the Top 150 Public Companies
Find out who has moved up (and down) the most in rankings and who is off the list this year. Also, take a quick quiz: Guess the Industry.
» Preview the Top 200 Private Companies
» Read more about the Top 200 Private Companies
Find out who has moved up (and down) the most in rankings and who is off the list this year. Also, take a quick quiz: Guess the Industry.
Related:
» Tampa Bay's top private companies employ tens of thousands of area workers
Survey: Out-of-pocket medical expenses skyrocketing
Carol Schaub of Madeira Beach is thinking about dropping her health insurance because she can't afford the $500 monthly premium. Bob Shah of Seminole increased the deductible on his family's plan to $5,000 to keep his rates affordable. Janet and David Quinn of Brooksville have put off needed treatments and medications for financial reasons. These are a few faces of a trend that has seen the amount of money American families shell out for health care more than double over the past decade, according to a new study. The report, released this month by the industry consulting firm Milliman, found that average out-of-pocket health care costs for a family of four with insurance have ballooned from $3,634 in 2002 to $8,008 this year. And that's for families who get coverage from their employers. If you're paying COBRA premiums like Schaub, or buying on the individual market like the Shahs, the costs are often much higher. Health experts and advocates say that rising heath costs will force more people to the ranks of the uninsured or force them to skip necessary care and medications. They say the federal health reform law may help, but most major provisions don't take effect until 2014. What's a family to do until then? [Source: St. Petersburg Times]
Florida clamps down on traveling workers who claim injuries
Florida workers who travel as part of their jobs may soon have a harder time claiming benefits from on-the-job accidents — thanks, in large part, to the state's professional sports teams.
Sometime in the next few weeks, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign into law a measure designed to ensure that workers who are injured while temporarily working in another state can't pursue workers-compensation claims against their employer in those states.
The legislation, passed unanimously by the Florida Legislature last month, was sought by Florida's professional sports franchises, lead by the National Basketball Association's Orlando Magic, the National Hockey League's Tampa Bay Lightning and the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars. Lobbyists for the teams say the law is needed to close a loophole that allows their players to seek claims in other states. Their most oft-cited statistic: From the inception of the Jaguars in 1995 through 2009, the franchise has played only five of its 224 games in California. Yet 95 percent of the team's workers-compensation claims have been in California, where workers-comp laws are more favorable for employees.
[Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
» Worker's Comp -- Why It's Working
A conversation with Joseph Kittinger
Aviator Joseph Kittinger holds records for highest parachute jump (102,800 feet from space) and for being the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in a gas balloon.
 [Photo: Jeffrey Camp] |
» You had to go up to 100,000 feet, and the only way to go up there was a balloon. I actually made three balloon flights, 76,000 feet, 75,000 feet and 103,000 feet. To get down, I jumped.
» I had a mother and father who were very loving and very concerned about my future. They were bound and determined that I was going to be a success. I don't think my boys had the advantage that I did because my mother and father were there all the time and I wasn't. I was in Vietnam. I was doing research, so I wasn't there as frequently as I wish I could have been. But both of my boys grew up very successfully. I'm proud of both of them.
» The free fall was 4 minutes and 36 seconds. You've got to remember that space is a vacuum. There's no pressure, so when I jumped I accelerated for about the first 20 seconds and reached terminal velocity at 614 mph. From then on, I slowed down. When the parachute opened, I was doing about 150 mph.
» I think I got my confidence from my childhood, going hunting and fishing, being outside and racing boats. My mother and father would challenge me constantly to exert myself and take responsibility. They had confidence in me, and I think that gave me my spirit of adventure, my spirit of trying to contribute.
» There's no way you can visualize the speed. There's nothing you can see to see how fast you're going. You have no depth perception. If you're in a car driving down the road and you close your eyes, you have no idea what your speed is. It's the same thing if you're free falling from space. There are no signposts. You know you are going
very fast, but you don't feel it. You don't have a 614-mph wind blowing on you.
I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet.
South Florida's nursery industry: Alive and growing
It takes more than pretty plants to stay in the nursery business.
Today's nursery farmers spend less time getting their hands dirty in the field, and more time thinking about marketing, science and consumer behavior.
At Flamingo Road Nursery in Davie, that means luring in customers with novelty items like double-yolk eggs at an on-site farmer's market.
At The Jungle Nursery in Homestead, that means taking a high-tech approach to growing, and getting creative to develop a one-of-a-kind planting pot.
At Costa Farms, based in South Miami-Dade County, that means more research to develop better plants, and marketing to keep consumers interested.
It's hard to imagine South Florida without nurseries. There are more than 1,500 nurseries in Miami-Dade alone. Some of the largest nurseries, such as Manuel Diaz Farms in South Dade, cultivate tens of thousands of acres and have millions in sales. Small nurseries may cultivate acreage in the -teens, with sales of $100,000 or less.
David Peyton, president of First National Bank of South Florida, based in South Miami-Dade, said the industry is the bank's largest customer.
"I can't minimize the value of the nursery business. It's really been good for the bank," he said.
But the industry hasn't been immune to the slumping economy.
[Source: Miami Herald]
ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:
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With Jacksonville wage growth, appearance can be deceiving
Wage growth in Jacksonville appears to be clawing back up after two years of doldrums, but at least one economist warns that the figure's 2010 rise may not be a sign of hope after all.
Year-over-year growth in Duval County worker pay bottomed out in 2008, hitting 0.2 percent after six years of 3 percent or better year-over-year growth, according to the Agency for Workforce Innovation.
The indicator headed upward again last year, showing 2.6 percent year-over-year. But that likely was due to losses in low-paying jobs, not pay increases across the board, said agency chief economist Rebecca Rust. She said average employment in the county fell by about 10,700 from the end of the third quarter in 2009 to the end of the same quarter in 2010, according to the agency's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Program.
"Also, some private employers have continued or resumed to give annual pay increases and annual bonuses," Rust said.
The flattening of growth in 2008 and 2009 was related to reduced work hours and wages, as well as frozen salaries, she said.
"It could be all of the above," Rust said. "All are related to insufficient economic demand."
› Orlando firms learn lessons in international trade
Orlando general contractor Derrick Wallace said he knew he was in foreign territory when he recently sent $1,000 to a contractor in Nigeria — and a helpful Western Union clerk queried him about whether he really knew the person who would get the money.
The clerk, he said, asked how he knew the Nigerian businessman and whether he had ever dealt with him before. The "Nigerian phishing scam" is a classic advance-fee fraud that long ago made the leap from typewritten letters to Internet email.
"She was trying to protect me," Wallace said of the exchange.
As Florida's gross domestic product for construction has shrunk in recent years, local companies have increasingly sought to capitalize on growing international trade. Wallace and others say they have learned a few lessons along the way.
» CEO Sounding Board: What have your recent export experiences been like?
› CoolJuice Beverage boss touts value of natural fruit juices
Rob Paladino, 53, is chief executive of CoolJuice Beverage Co., which aims to be one of the first national brands of all-juice fruit punches in chilled drink coolers free of high-fructose corn syrup and added sugars. Now available at 1,200 schools, including many in Florida, and a growing number of supermarket chains including Sweetbay Supermarket and Winn-Dixie, CoolJuice sales are projected to leap from $1 million last year to $8 million this year. Based in Dunedin, the six-person startup is run by two veteran beverage industry executives who co-founded the company. They steered contractors to create, package, produce and distribute their 100 percent fruit juice blends, which are sweetened only by juice. The two spent five years and $3 million creating a four-product line positioned as a healthier alternative to most fruit punches, which contain little juice and are sweetened with cheaper added sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. Read his interview with the St. Petersburg Times.
› Darden rents from itself and saves on taxes
Orlando-based Darden Restaurants has cut its corporate taxes in some states by renting restaurants from itself, using a strategy that has led to challenges and millions of dollars in back taxes for some other big companies.
The owner of chains including Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse has put some of its almost 1,900 restaurants into two tax-exempt real-estate investment trusts. Darden leases the restaurants and takes tax deductions on those expenses, while the trusts pay dividends back to the company.
Businesses routinely seek ways to lower their taxes. And a number of multistate retailers, including Wal-Mart and AutoZone, also have used company-owned trusts — often referred to as "captive REITs."
Darden, Orlando's only Fortune 500 corporation and the world's largest full-service restaurant company, said in an email that its trusts are designed primarily to help better manage its real-estate portfolio. The company says its tax savings are "nominal."
› Cocoa Beach sunscreen company's outlook bright
Tom Rinks can legitimately be called a marketing whiz.
During a long career of helping clients push their products, he worked with the likes of Adidas and Snickers. Remember Taco Bell's talking Chihuahua? That was Rinks' idea.
So when the 48-year-old started Sun Bum Sunscreens in 2010 -- its Cocoa Beach headquarters will open this summer -- he knew he could have focused more on his promotional prowess and less on the product and still find a spot in the multibillion-dollar skin protection market.
But Rinks, who grew up in Southern California and now lives outside Orlando, has had skin cancer. So have his father and many friends. He wanted to sell a product he knew would help battle the affliction that strikes 1 in 5 people.
"Great marketing will get you by once," he said. "But if it's not a great product, people aren't going to come back. It's like having a great façade on a restaurant. It doesn't matter if the outside looks good and the food sucks."
Though Sun Bum will not lack for marketing panache -- the products are touted with a cartoon ape named Sonny and arresting images of the beach lifestyle -- Rinks said Sun Bum is not about hollow imagery. As it closes in on its one-year anniversary, its presence in the crowded field of sun care products is evident with increased placement at surf shops and specialty retailers all over Florida, as well as several high-end hotels and resorts. This year, the company plans to start selling in California and Hawaii.
› A team that loves distressed properties
The foreclosure crisis helped make Al Dumas and his 11-person team into one of the most productive real estate sales operations in Florida.
His team and its four affiliated agents were responsible for closing 537 transactions and more than $50 million in sales volume in 2010.
Though sales have slowed in 2011, thanks to the foreclosure-processing mess, Dumas says foreclosure volumes will pick up again and will continue to dominate the news for years to come.
"I've heard predictions that by the time this is over, one third of all houses in the United States will go through some sort of loan modification, short sale, foreclosure or deed in lieu," said Dumas, an agent with Re/Max Alliance Group in Sarasota. "Its possible that total number of deficiencies will be higher than during the Great Depression."
In Florida, Dumas predicts that foreclosure filings in 2012 will exceed those in 2011, and 2013's totals will exceed 2012's.
What Dumas does not know, however, is when banks will feel confident enough to start filing foreclosures at the pace they kept before law firms got in trouble for the way they processed foreclosure documents.
"I've heard from some institutions that filings will pick up again in June and July," Dumas said. "I've heard others say the end of the year."
Go to page 2 for more stories ...
› Fraud hits Southwest Florida hard
Consumers lost more than $1.7 billion last year in frauds reported to the Federal Trade Commission, and Charlotte County was one of the hardest hit regions in the nation.
Charlotte ranked seventh among major metropolitan areas for fraud complaints filed with the FTC in 2010.
Consumer fraud also was active in the combined Sarasota-Manatee counties metro area, which ranked 41st among the more than 350 regions measured.
Each incident of fraud cost the victim an average $2,751.
Those frauds were separate from identity theft, which remains the leading consumer complaint to the FTC.
Florida led the nation last year with the highest per-capita rate of identity thefts reported to the FTC. Sarasota-Manatee ranked 131st among metro areas, while Charlotte ranked 153rd.
The most common types of non-identity theft frauds involved debt collection, Internet services, prizes-sweepstakes-lotteries, shop-at-home and catalog sales and imposter scams.
› Summer is looking up for Orlando tourism industry
Signs point toward a good summer for Orlando's primary industry, as hotels look to fill more rooms and theme parks are riding on a wave of pent-up demand.
With Memorial Day weekend signalling the unofficial start of the summer travel season, Orlando is expected to be one of the top spots on travelers' minds this season.
"We're doing great compared to the rest of the country," said Abraham Pizam, dean of the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. "The hospitality and tourism industries are recovering and are seeing some good times — I wouldn't say the best of times."
Pizam attributes the positive momentum to people giving into their desire for a vacation even though the overall economy is still struggling. "Those who can afford ... will dig into their savings and spend money in order to get away from all the bad news," Pizam said. "The question that is the most important one: Is that sustainable?"
For this summer, at least, that appears to be the case.
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› Tax cuts will impact Tampa Bay restoration efforts
Environmental projects that affect the health of Tampa Bay will be cut to levels not seen in a decade as shrinking property values and mandated tax cuts lop a third from the water management district's tax revenues.
The Southwest Florida Water Management District faces a 33 percent reduction in property taxes in the coming year, meaning less money for storm water treatment, reclaimed water, flood control and restoration of habitat along rivers and estuaries.
The cost of those local projects often is split 50-50 between the district and cities or counties.
The reduction will force the district to reduce spending on local projects from $60 million in the current budget year to $40 million starting Oct. 1.
The ripple effect of those cuts also could mean a setback or slowing in the environmental recovery of Tampa Bay.
"We may not see the sort of recovery we have seen in the past years," said Holly Greening, executive director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, an agency that oversees work to improve the Bay.
› In shift, feds target top execs for health fraud
It's getting personal now. In a shift still evolving, federal enforcers are targeting individual executives in health care fraud cases that used to be aimed at impersonal corporations.
The new tactic is raising the anxiety level - and risks - for corporate honchos at drug companies, medical device manufacturers, nursing home chains and other major health care enterprises that deal with Medicare and Medicaid.
Previously, if a company got caught, its lawyers in many cases would be able to negotiate a financial settlement. The company would write the government a check for a number followed by lots of zeroes and promise not to break the rules again. Often the cost would just get passed on to customers.
Now, on top of fines paid by a company, senior executives can face criminal charges even if they weren't involved in the scheme but could have stopped it had they known. Furthermore, they can also be banned from doing business with government health programs, a career-ending consequence.
› At Lee Roy Selmon's and Chico's, confidence spurs expansions
In a sign of confidence, Lee Roy Selmon's will open its first new store in five years on June 14.
Located at 34200 U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor, the BBQ place promises to up the big-screen HDTV ante among bay area family sports pubs.
The new-look Selmon's sports side-by-side, 120-inch behemoth TVs hung over the bar, plus 30 more screens 51 inches or larger inside and outside. That's about one screen for every seven seats in a 232-seat restaurant with stadium-style seating. Three levels of tables set on risers will offer unobstructed views.
It will be the seventh Selmon's location and first expansion since the chain's onetime parent, Tampa-based OSI Restaurant Partners Inc., decided the company's future was as a Florida chain. OSI sold the chain to a group of founding managers two years ago.
› Visual effects firm coming to Florida
The visual effects company that made Brad Pitt look old and Jeff Bridges look young is expanding to Florida.
Digital Domain Media Group is building a 120,000-square-foot facility, which is scheduled to open in Port St. Lucie by December this year. The company is already working out of a 65,000-square-foot temporary facility in the area with nearly 250 employees.
Besides the new facility in Port St. Lucie, Digital Domain has also partnered with Florida State University's film school to build a branch campus in West Palm Beach.
Digital Domain Media Group Chairman and CEO John Textor said he's been looking to bring a big project to his home state for more than two decades.
"I started thinking about opportunities in Florida back in 1987, when I graduated from college," Textor said.
› Nursing homes a growing industry
In a region where construction has become rare, there is one part of the commercial sector that has been active. For the second time this year, ground was broken for a nursing-home facility that has skilled-nursing beds.
The Glenridge on Palmer Ranch's Carroll Center became the second company to break ground on a skilled-nursing center when it began work recently on a 28-bed expansion estimated to cost $6.4 million.
In January, Florida Living Options started construction on its $29 million Hawthorne Health and Rehab, a 120-bed skilled-nursing center on DeSoto Road.
Because Florida has a moratorium on adding skilled-nursing beds, the Carroll Center went the same route as Florida Living Options, acquiring the rights to 28 beds from a facility that was closing. Those rights cost $700,000, more than 10 percent of the project's total costs, said Charles Tirrell, Glenridge's chief executive officer.