The “Small” BRW Top 500 Private Companies
The annual BRW Top 500 Private Companies is once again a reminder of how small -- but beautiful -- Australia is, and how our Top 500 Private Companies are small on a world scale.
The survey is addictive for most business owners. To make it on BRW's list would say something about our companies. Our success and achievements. It's not impossible and the mountain is not too high.
How much revenue would your company have to achieve in order to make it on the list?! Not a huge amount: $83.7 million. In fact, to make the Top 400 takes a mere $120 million in revenue.
The big-end-of-town of Australia's private companies are mega-businesses. The Top 100 make more than $450 million a piece. The icons of Australia’s private companies: Visy, Linfox and Sutton’s Motors, for example, are all sitting nicely in the Top 50 where the entry ticket requires a minimum $781 million in revenue.
In contrast, the 500th largest private company in the USA makes around US$1 Billion in revenue (source: Forbes magazine). Their population of 305 million is about 14 times ours. Interestingly, our 500th largest private company at $83.7M revenue times "14" is equal to roughly A$1.172 Billion. Almost a perfect scale.
It would be great to see our leading private companies growing in revenue, and to see the total number of companies exceeding the magic $100 million mark go up. BRW would then publish the Top 1000 or even the Top 2000. After all, there are close to 2 million private companies in Australia.
Sadly this is not going to happen anytime soon. The Top 500 remain a static playing field. Let's compare the lists of 2008 and 2009. When it comes to size in revenue, one wonders why there is no material change:
|
Rank |
2008 |
2009 |
|
100th |
$ 458.8M |
$ 450.0M |
|
400th |
$ 121.0M |
$ 120.0M |
|
500th |
$ 83.0M |
$ 83.7M |
Although there are attractions for successful private companies to go public and list on the ASX, a lot of seasoned business owners are very happy to enjoy the privacy of their wealth and business success and we will see them on the above list year after year.
Business Accelerator is an advisory firm to privately held companies.
We specialise in small capital raisings of up to $5 million, business
sales, mergers and acquisitions.
Address: Level 31, RBS Tower, 88 Phillip Street, Sydney, NSW 2000
Phone 1300 004 888
Email info@accelerator.com.au