Editor's note: Company rankings for the current and previous years are based on figures reported in 2000. Therefore, companies that revised their 1999 revenues may have changed their '99 ranking as compared with the ranking that appeared in last year's Printing Impressions 500. Similarly, the percentage change in sales is calculated on the most recent information provided.2000 Ranking:Previous Year's Ranking:Company: Total Sales (millions):Previous Year's (millions):Change (%):Principal Officer:Employees:Primary Specialties:Web Offset Units:Sheetfed Offset Units:Other:Ownership:Plants:5142Publishers Printing/Publishers Press, Shepherdsville, KY$160.40$166.30-4Nicholas X. Simon1,750PUB 100%100100Private 2 2000 Ranking:Previous Year's Ranking:Company:Total Sales (millions):Previous Year's (millions):Change (%):Principal Officer:Employees:Primary Specialties:Web Offset Units:Sheetfed Offset Units:Other:Ownership:Plants:5252Phoenix Color Corp., Hagerstown, MD$160.00E$141.00+13Louis LaSorsa900BKS 100%61520Private 4 2000 Ranking:Previous Year's
Nationwide Graphics
BY ERIK CAGLE When history compares the years 1998 and 2000 in regard to consolidation in the printing industry, two starkly contrasting results will be evident to the naked eye. There really is no comparison, as the degree of major consolidation has slacked off dramatically. Perhaps it is more important to note that the state of the industry during 2000 was not all that dissimilar from 1998, at least not from close range. Hindsight may eventually offer greater perspective, but the fact of the matter is the economic condition alone did not cause M&A activity to take a back seat. Wall Street rubbed its
As the consolidation march pauses to take a breath, the sector's leaders are taking the time to prove to Wall Street that they can manage their new empires. BY CHRISTOPHER CORNELL About this time two years ago, the trade press were using metaphors like "juggernaut" and "tidal wave" to describe the actions of a half-dozen companies in the graphic arts industry, as they began an awe-inspiring crusade to consolidate one of North America's more fractured business sectors. Any metaphor that implied inevitability seemed appropriate. Announcements of new acquisitions came, at times, weekly; sometimes they even appeared daily. What a difference two years can make.
I am writing this on January 1, 2000, and there's trouble brewing in the old print shop. Yep, Joe Davis, chairman and CEO of Consolidated Graphics, announced in a press release that he "believes lower-than-expected sales volume is attributable to general industry conditions." Davis believes this statement because Andrew Paparozzi, chief economist for the National Association of Printing Leadership (NAPL), published a report that said, for the first time in 15 years, real print sales (RPS) is lagging behind gross domestic product (GDP) growth. According to Paparozzi, printing industry sales growth will slow to 3 percent to 3.5 percent from the 4 percent to 5
Internet companies are changing print buyer to printer (and printer to printer) interaction. Beyond e-procurement and equipment auctions, the Internet is targeting the very core of the printing industry—the printing community itself. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO John Cooley Jr., vice president of sales at his family's business, Philadelphia-based, $25 million Innovation Printing & Litho, does not oversee a company the size and scope of R.R. Donnelley & Sons. Cooley does not buy consumables with the same purchase power as do print consolidators the likes of Nationwide Graphics. Cooley does not push Innovation Printing, founded by Cooley's father, to compete against the billion dollar
BY CHRISTOPHER CORNELL Each little drop in the bucket doesn't amount to much, but after a while it can turn into a torrent; that's the metaphor that applies to the graphic arts industry in 1999. Each individual merger and acquisition during the course of the year didn't affect the industry that much, but, in the aggregate, 1999 will likely be remembered as the year in which the number of companies in it noticeably shrunk. The biggest news story of the year was one just about everybody saw coming. Just after mid-year, following weeks of industry speculation, Quebecor Printing and World Color Press signed a
Acquisitions, technology investments and the development of new market niches. Take a look at how Cunningham Graphics Int'l and Nationwide Graphics are employing these and other aggressive measures to grow their companies rapidly. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Printing is an industry of giants. Multi-million-dollar organizations, operating billions of dollars worth of collective technologies, employing hundreds of thousands, serving the varied needs of millions of consumers. This is your world. A world of entrepreneurs who realize the importance of customer service, employee recognition and technology investments, as well as the ability to satisfy Wall Street financial analysts. This is also the world of Michael Cunningham,
BY ERIK CAGLE Sony and Cher, Laverne and Shirley, Thelma and Louise, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. You can now add commercial printing and the economy to the list of couples who no longer exist. For many years, the growth of the commercial printing industry walked hand-in-hand with that of the nation's economy. Recent findings indicate that other factors are having more of an influence in the growth of printing than the economy, according to Andrew Paparozzi, chief economist for the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL). "For the first time since we've been tracking data, we're finding that the print industry is growing
The commercial printing industry's leading consolidators share their criteria for the art of the deal. BY ERIK CAGLE When one of our industry's acquisitions is among the top financial stories on "CNN," it becomes readily apparent that the world of commercial printing consolidation is heating up rather than slowing down. The highly anticipated deal that saw Quebecor Printing purchase one of the industry's leading consolidators, World Color Press, for $1.4 billion in cash and stock on July 12, was met by a lot of oohs and aahs. It was an impressive post-Fourth of July fireworks display, to be sure, even though many in the
San Francisco—The Quebecor acquisition of World Color Press dwarfs any other merger and acquisition news in the printing industry, but the industry's other players have not been idle in the past weeks. Perhaps most notable was the news that yet another company has joined an increasingly crowded field of companies seeking to consolidate the still-fragmented North American commercial printing market. The new kid on the block is San Francisco-based Kelmscott Communications LLC, and its first major deal is the acquisition of three printing companies: Watermark Press in San Francisco; Printing Control in Seattle; and Commercial Printing/CDS in Medford, OR. The three boast aggregate sales
