Welcome to the Chronicle 100
Can someone give me an Amen!
We’ve actually got 100 companies in the Chronicle 100. For the past few years this hasn’t been so as declining oil prices chipped away at the profits of Houston’s biggest companies.
To be considered for this ranking, a company has to turn a profit. Plus, the rankings are based on growth, and in a volatile economy we don’t always get it.
We tally total revenue, earnings-per-share growth, annual revenue growth and one-year total return to shareholders. We have S&P Global Market Intelligence crunch the data.
The price of oil has an outsized effect. Oil hit a high of $76 last year, up from a low of $26 in 2016.
That put Big Oil in the top 10 places on our list and helped this section live up to its name.
In 2018 — the year on which this report is based — we found 100 companies. For 2017 we found 91, and that was up from 69 in 2016 and 81 in 2015.
Last year, I wrote that we hoped the next Chronicle 100 would yield 100 companies in the ranking. And here we are — a reflection of the good times that hydrocarbons bring our town, not to mention a solid U.S. economy.
Read deeper into this report, however, and you’ll see that despite their big revenues, oil and gas companies are not the area’s biggest employers. Houston’s business leaders and politicians often like to boast that the city’s economy is diverse, and that’s true to some extent, particularly with employment counts. But, as the Chronicle 100 data show, much of the economic machinery here was built around oil and gas and remains dependent.
We hope you will use this report as your guide to Houston’s biggest companies, both public and private. You’ll want to refer back to it throughout the next year as you generate sales leads, look for career opportunities or see how your competitors are doing.
And congratulations to the 100 companies that made the list.
For additional charts, check out houstonchronicle.com/chron100