The Inc. 100

Surveying America's fastest-growing small public companies.

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Some facts about the INC. 100 never change. Year after year our annual ranking of the fastest-growing publicly held smaller companies in the United States is dominated by young, healthy, innovative, highly productive concerns, and 1983 is no exception. On this latest list are 53 companies formed since 1973 and 36 corporations with sales of $100,000 or more per employee.

Manufacturers continue to outnumber service, mining, and drilling companies. Computer, data processing, and software concerns still make up about a third of the ranking. Cray Research Inc. (#74) in Minneapolis and Tandem Computers Inc. (#46) in Cupertino, Calif., hold on to their status as the only five-year veterans of the list.

Heading the 1983 INC. 100, though, is a new name, BRAE Corp. Founded in 1977, this San Francisco -- based company owns, leases, and manages transportation equipment, principally rail cars. Its growth is nothing short of explosive -- an 88,970% surge in sales during the last five years, a 193% increase from 1981 to 1982.

In second and third place are other names not on last year's list -- Altos Computer Systems in San Jose, Calif., and Pizza Time Theatre in Sunnyvale, Calif. Altos, a six-year-old microcomputer manufacturer, ranked first last year on the INC. 500, our annual ranking of the fastest-growing privately held smaller corporations in the United States. It went public in November. Sales by Altos soared 33,871% in the 1978 -- 82 base period and 138% from 1981 to 1982. Sales by Pizza Time Theatre (the company that made Chuck E. Cheese famous) multiplied 285 times in the past five years, a 28,430% increase.

Bringing up the tail of the 1983 INC. 100 are Xonics Inc. (#99), a manufacturer of medical imaging products headquartered in Des Plaines, Ill., and Intelligent Systems (#100), a 10-year-old, Atlanta-based maker of desktop microcomputers. Xonics' sales jumped from about $14 million in 1978 to nearly $87 million in 1982, a 504% increase. Intelligent Systems' revenues grew from $4 million in 1978 to $25 million in 1982, a sixfold increase.

Overall, 47 new names -- Comair (#27), Plasma-Therm (#80), and Ryan's Family Steak Houses (#32), among them -- and 53 old ones -- including Alaska Diversified Resources (#88), Lexidata (#20), and North American Watch (#95) -- appear on the 1983 INC. 100. One company takes its name from a saint, St. Jude Medical (#61) in St. Paul; another from a sinner, Godfather's Pizza (#44) of Omaha. One is named for a fruit, Apple Computer (#5) in Cupertino; another for a famous designer, Liz Claiborne, (#84) in New York City.

On the list are 17 computer manufacturers, 11 energy producers, eight data processors, five restaurateurs, and four cable television systems. Corporations with interests in medical and health products and services occupy 20 spots, and data communication and word-processing companies hold 3. All together the INC. 100 companies employ 68,273 people (58,480 more than they did in 1978) and retain a healthy median of 9.6% of their sales as aftertax earnings. On a sour note, median sales are down slightly from $29 million last year to $27 million this year.

Revenues have shot up 1,189% since 1978. In the past year, the companies overall report a 61% gain, a figure best described as spectacular when compared to the anemic 2% increase mustered in 1982 by the country's 500 largest corporations. Most impressive are the INC. 100's computer manufacturers and food-service companies. Since 1978, sales by computer makers have multiplied an average of 42 times. Sales by food-service corporations are about 72 times the 1978 level.

The companies on the 1983 INC. 100 are also larger than their counterparts from past lists. For example, 30 of the corporations on 1983 list posted sales of $50 million or more, and 21 had revenues in excess of $75 million. Thirteen topped $100 million, and four were over the $200 million mark. Average sales jumped from $50 million for the 1982 INC. 100 to $53 million for our current group of companies.

And this year's INC. 100 companies trace their roots to a greater variety of places. They hail from 30 states, with one-fifth based in California. Other front-runner states are New York with II companies; Texas with 10; Minnesota with 7; Colorado and New Jersey with 5 each; Pennsylvania with 4; and Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Oklahoma with 3 each.

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