The Branham300: bright spots in a tough year
Plus: we’re online with a new Web site and on Twitter at @BackboneMag
By Peter Wolchak
April 1, 2010
April 1, 2010
Welcome to our sixth-annual presentation of the Branham300, Canada’s premiere listing of high-flying tech companies. The results, it has to be said, are not entirely positive. Even a list that concentrates on the best and most profitable cannot come out of the recent economic downturn unscathed. In 2008 the Branham300 companies set a revenue record: $75.97 billion, up almost 20 per cent over 2007. Their combined revenue for 2009 was $71.32 billion, a decrease of a bit more than six per cent.
Much of that drop falls at the feet of once-great Nortel, which went from revenue of $12.7 billion and the number one spot in 2008, to number six in 2009 with only $4.9 billion in revenue. It’s a measure of Nortel’s importance that its struggles, bankruptcy and piecemeal breakup can so affect Canada’s overall numbers. But this misfortune made room for a new number one: RIM rocketed from $7.36 billion in 2008 to $11.58 billion last year.
And, as Branham points out on page 21, there are other bright spots. The revenue threshold for 2009’s Top 250 climbed to $7.05 million from $5.88 million, and the companies on the Next 50 listing (those that would fill spots 251 to 300 if it were a Top 300 list) increased combined revenues by 24 per cent compared to 2008. That’s a great achievement and one that speaks well of next year’s profitability prospects.
Consider, too, the standouts on the Movers and Shakers list, the companies that climbed the farthest. Revenues at Enablence Technologies shot up an incredible 1,135 per cent in 2009 and GuestLogix climbed 69 spots.
Let’s give a shout-out to stability as well, a valuable commodity lately. The top 10 companies on the 250 are the same as the previous year, although the players have jockeyed for position.
And racing is an apt analogy. Canada is like a promising young racehorse: we’ve performed well in a few races, winning a couple, losing some of the big ones, but always in the running. And it feels now like we’re waiting for a starter’s pistol. Some had hoped that impetus would come from the government’s last budget, but the ICT sector was largely ignored, a victim, perhaps, of its own success, as failing industries received the bulk of Ottawa’s attention. Furthermore, as identified at the Digital Economy summit hosted last summer by Industry Canada, our country lacks a strong and unifying ICT vision.
CATAAlliance’s spokesperson Terry Matthews recently said Canada should have 10 domestic ICT companies with annual revenues exceeding $5 billion by 2020; according to Branham we currently have five. We at Backbone think 10 is achievable, especially as we move out of economic bad times and back into prosperity.
Follow us on Twitter visit our new Web site
Tech news, trends and opinions matter to you and we’ve recently increased and improved the ways in which we deliver them.
Our Web site has been completely rebuilt. The new site is cleaner, page loads and searches are faster, there is more daily content, we’ve upped the number of RSS feeds, and the site is more user-friendly overall. We’ve also redesigned the back end to provide better search engine optimization and more relevant user search results.
As part of our revamp, we have also recommitted to Twitter. You’ll find the feed on our home page, but please follow us: @BackboneMag or
www.twitter.com/backbonemag. We cover breaking news, interesting studies and new gadgets, and we comment on recent developments that are important to our readers.
Peter Wolchak
Editor
pwolchak@backbonemag.com
Much of that drop falls at the feet of once-great Nortel, which went from revenue of $12.7 billion and the number one spot in 2008, to number six in 2009 with only $4.9 billion in revenue. It’s a measure of Nortel’s importance that its struggles, bankruptcy and piecemeal breakup can so affect Canada’s overall numbers. But this misfortune made room for a new number one: RIM rocketed from $7.36 billion in 2008 to $11.58 billion last year.
And, as Branham points out on page 21, there are other bright spots. The revenue threshold for 2009’s Top 250 climbed to $7.05 million from $5.88 million, and the companies on the Next 50 listing (those that would fill spots 251 to 300 if it were a Top 300 list) increased combined revenues by 24 per cent compared to 2008. That’s a great achievement and one that speaks well of next year’s profitability prospects.
Consider, too, the standouts on the Movers and Shakers list, the companies that climbed the farthest. Revenues at Enablence Technologies shot up an incredible 1,135 per cent in 2009 and GuestLogix climbed 69 spots.
Let’s give a shout-out to stability as well, a valuable commodity lately. The top 10 companies on the 250 are the same as the previous year, although the players have jockeyed for position.
And racing is an apt analogy. Canada is like a promising young racehorse: we’ve performed well in a few races, winning a couple, losing some of the big ones, but always in the running. And it feels now like we’re waiting for a starter’s pistol. Some had hoped that impetus would come from the government’s last budget, but the ICT sector was largely ignored, a victim, perhaps, of its own success, as failing industries received the bulk of Ottawa’s attention. Furthermore, as identified at the Digital Economy summit hosted last summer by Industry Canada, our country lacks a strong and unifying ICT vision.
CATAAlliance’s spokesperson Terry Matthews recently said Canada should have 10 domestic ICT companies with annual revenues exceeding $5 billion by 2020; according to Branham we currently have five. We at Backbone think 10 is achievable, especially as we move out of economic bad times and back into prosperity.
Follow us on Twitter visit our new Web site
Tech news, trends and opinions matter to you and we’ve recently increased and improved the ways in which we deliver them.
Our Web site has been completely rebuilt. The new site is cleaner, page loads and searches are faster, there is more daily content, we’ve upped the number of RSS feeds, and the site is more user-friendly overall. We’ve also redesigned the back end to provide better search engine optimization and more relevant user search results.
As part of our revamp, we have also recommitted to Twitter. You’ll find the feed on our home page, but please follow us: @BackboneMag or
www.twitter.com/backbonemag. We cover breaking news, interesting studies and new gadgets, and we comment on recent developments that are important to our readers.
Peter Wolchak Editor
pwolchak@backbonemag.com
