FT ranking: The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2024

The FT is pleased to announce its fifth annual ranking of the fastest-growing companies in the Americas, covering a period that took in the pandemic and the end of rock-bottom interest rates.

Based on disclosed revenue growth between 2019 and 2022, the median revenue of the ranked companies, at $20.5mn, was slightly lower than it had been last year, but was still well ahead of the $12.2mn median from the previous year’s ranking, which included the pre-pandemic period. 

This year’s top-ranked companies were the telephone marketing business Marketcall, cannabinoid product manufacturer MC Global, nutritional supplements seller Thesis, ecommerce services provider myFBAprep, and healthcare educational-materials supplier Archer Review (analysis continues below the table).

(continued) The sector with the most entries in the ranking was IT and software, with 102 companies, or one-fifth of the total. Other entries were spread across a broad range of industries. Second-most-common were advertising and marketing businesses, followed by fintech, financial services and insurance groups. The least represented sector was aerospace and defence, with just two companies.

The vast majority of the companies included were, as before, from the US — 387 of the 500. However, for the first time, there were more entries from Latin America than from Canada.

Within the US, the cities of New York and San Francisco and their surrounding areas were home to the most entries, with roughly 40 each, but the others were spread across the country. Outside those two centres, other notable clusters of fast-growing companies were Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas with 14, and Washington DC and surrounding areas with 20.

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The top companies by revenue included some of the US’s most recognisable names — including Amazon, Google’s owner Alphabet, Pfizer, and Tesla but also several lesser known businesses, such as IT company TD Synnex, oilfield services company EnterpriseProducts, and food logistics company Performance Food Group.

Our list was compiled with Statista, a research company, and ranks businesses across the Americas by their compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue between 2019 and 2022. The ranking is not necessarily a reflection of the size of countries’ economies but, rather, their ability to innovate and the willingness of their high-growth companies to be candid with financial information.

Readers can use the arrow buttons at the top of the columns in the table (above) to sort by country, sector or revenue, in order to analyse the data in more detail. 

Because many fast-growing companies tend to be privately held and do not publicly disclose detailed financial data, a ranking such as this can never claim to be complete. But the rigorous screening process (please refer to the methodology below) — which also requires senior executives to sign off on the figures submitted by their companies — means the ranking can offer readers a meaningful insight into the health of these private companies.

Methodology

The FT Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2024 is a list of the 500 companies in the Americas that have the highest growth in publicly disclosed revenues between 2019 and 2022.

The ranking was created through a complex procedure. Although the search was extensive, the ranking does not claim to be complete, as some companies did not want to make their figures public or did not participate for other reasons.

The project was advertised online and in print, allowing all eligible companies to register via websites created by Statista and the Financial Times. In addition, through research in company databases and other public sources, Statista identified tens of thousands of companies in the Americas as potential candidates for the FT ranking. These companies were invited to participate in the competition by post, email and telephone.

The application phase ran from August to December 2023. The submitted revenue figures had to be certified by the chief financial officer, chief executive, or a member of the executive committee, of the company. Companies with three or fewer employees, or companies that are not a legal entity, were subject to additional checks to verify their revenue numbers.

CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION IN THE LIST

To be included in the list of the Americas’ fastest-growing companies, a company had to meet the following criteria:

• Revenue of at least $100,000 generated in 2019 (or currency value equivalent according to the average of the actual fiscal year);

• Revenue of at least $1.5mn generated in 2022 (or currency value equivalent according to the average of the actual fiscal year);

• An independent entity (not a subsidiary or branch office of any kind);

• Revenue growth between 2019 and 2022 that was primarily organic (ie “internally” stimulated);

• Headquartered in one of 20 American countries. Companies from these countries were eligible to participate: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the US, Uruguay, Venezuela.

CALCULATION OF GROWTH RATES

The calculation of company growth rates is based on the revenue figures submitted by the companies in the respective national currency. For better comparability in the ranking, the revenue figures were converted into US dollars. The average exchange rate for the financial year indicated by the company was used for this purpose.

The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was calculated as follows:

((revenue2022 / revenue2019)^(1/3)) - 1 = CAGR

The absolute growth between 2019 and 2022 was calculated as follows:

(revenue2022 / revenue2019) - 1 = Growth rate

EVALUATION AND QUALITY ASSURANCE

All information reported by the companies was processed and checked by Statista. Missing data entries (employee numbers, address data, etc) were researched in detail. Companies that did not fulfil the criteria for inclusion in the ranking were deleted.

In addition to the companies that responded to invitations to participate, Statista included some well-known companies noted for their remarkable growth. Financial information was collected via desk research using official sources, such as publicly available earnings presentations, investor relations websites, and annual reports.

The minimum CAGR required to be included in the ranking this year was 9 per cent.