America's biggest full-service remodelers saw their revenues grow 14% last year and are looking for another 13% climb in 2015, while the biggest replacement contractors had similar double-digit growth in 2014 and foresee an 8.4% rise this year, according to the just-issued Remodeling 550.
All told, the 325 full-service companies on this year's list expect to split more than $1.41 billion in revenues this year, up from $1.25 billion in 2014. Meanwhile, the 150 replacement contractors collected more than $2.29 billion last year and look to reap $2.48 billion in 2015.
The Remodeling 550 covers four groups: 325 full-service companies, 150 replacement contractors, 20 insurance restoration firms, and 55 franchises. The vast majority of it is based on reports submitted by the companies, with publicly available information providing the rest.
New to this year, participants in the full-service and replacement contractor categories could choose to have Guild Quality, the leading firm in customer satisfaction surveying for the remodeling industry, survey their customers. Businesses that won top marks from their clients received a special designation. In addition, the list also denotes all Remodeling 550 firms that over the years have been selected for Remodeling's Big50, our annual designation for companies that have achieved operational and financial excellence.
As with past years, there's enormous range within the ranks. For instance, while 2014 revenues for each full-service company averaged $3.84 million, 14.5% of the firms took in less than $1 million while 7.7% recorded more than $10 million. Likewise, at 10.2% of the 325 companies, the average job size was below $10,000, while 6.2% of the firms said their average job was worth more than a quarter million dollars.
When full-service companies call themselves that, they mean it--and not just for remodeling. Aside from collecting $1.25 billion from remodeling work last year, the full-service firms also collected roughly $158 million for non-remodeling work, often new-home construction. That's about 11% of their total revenue in 2014.
Replacement contractors typically focus on one component of remodeling, such as windows or roofing. They install smaller jobs than full-service remodelers, but do far more of them. This year's replacement contractors averaged 2,700 jobs per contractor in 2014, or nearly 16 times the average of 158 jobs done by full-service remodelers.
All together, this year's group of replacement contractors completed nearly 403,000 jobs in 2014. But the variations are vast: 37.8% of the companies did more than 1,000 jobs in 2014, while 12.8% completed fewer than 200.
