11 Maine companies make Inc. 5000, while WEX makes Fortune list

Tilson CEO Josh Broder at company headquarters in Portland.

File Photo / Tim Greenway Joshua Broder, CEO of Tilson, says the company's agreement with Microsoft to expand rural broadband access will benefit Maine and other states.

Write a Comment

By Staff

Eleven Maine companies have made Inc. magazine’s prestigious annual list of the country’s 5,000 fastest-growing private companies. And Portland-based WEX Inc. (NYSE: WEX) has made Fortune magazine's list of the 100 fastest-growing public ones.

The Maine members of this year’s Inc. 5000, published yesterday, are scattered from Portland to Caribou, and do business in a wide range of fields including advertising, manufacturing and telecommunications.

Companies on the list were ranked according to the percentage of their self-reported revenue growth from 2015 to 2018. To make the list, businesses had to have revenue of at least $2 million last year, and be privately held, independent companies — not subsidiaries or corporate divisions.

The ranked Maine companies, along with their three-year growth rates, 2018 revenues and headquarter locations, are:

No. 76, Brickell Men's Products, 4,208%, $10 million, Portland
No. 460, Starc Systems, 983%, $7.8 million, Brunswick
No. 868, F3 MFG, 490%, $17.2 million, Waterville
No. 892, Anchour, 476%, $2.5 million, Lewiston
No. 1025, E. Bouchard Co., 410%, $3.7 million, Caribou
No. 1388, SaviLinx, 298%, $17 million, Brunswick
No. 1773, Tilson Technology Management, 230%, $71.4 million, Portland
No. 2264, Veritas Prime, 177%, $8.1 million, Portland
No. 3100, Dream Local Digital, 119%, $3.6 million, Rockland
No. 3549, Sea Bags, 99%, $9.8 million, Portland
No. 4623, MuniciPAY, 62%, $4.8 million, Portland

The 2019 list, Inc.'s 38th ranking, includes some repeat honorees.

Tilson, a network deployment and IT professional services firm, has appeared on the Inc. 5000 for the past nine years, and is by far the largest ranked Maine business by revenue volume. This is the fifth time on the list for MuniciPAY, which provides electronic payment processing for government clients. SaviLinx, an outsourced contact center at Brunswick Landing, also appeared on the list in 2018 and 2017.

Digital marketing agency Dream Local, truck-body manufacturer F3 MFG and human resource consulting firm Veritas all debuted in the rankings last year. Only one in four companies that make the list return to it the next year, according to Inc., and less than 2% of the ranked companies make it eight or more times.

Last year, a total of 10 Maine companies were named to the Inc. 5000, and in 2017 there were 12.

Among the fastest-growing 100 public companies, WEX ranks No. 72, Fortune reported Thursday, and was the only Maine company to make the list.

The Fortune ranking is also based on three years of financial data, including revenue growth rate, earnings-per-share growth rate, and annualized total returns. WEX's growth on those scales was 22%, 37% and 33%, respectively.

Companies in the Fortune ranking had to have a minimum market capitalization of $250 million this year, and to have traded on a U.S. exchange since 2016. The fastest-growing company on the list was a Chinese internet service company, Momo, with growth rates of 141%, 193% and 53%, respectively.

This is the first time WEX has made the Fortune growth list, and the only ranking of a Maine company in recent years. Fortune has compiled the growth list for 33 years.