After dealing with some anomalous data in 2022, this year's profit margins and sales return to previous normal ranges, though sales still grew by $30 million from 2021's numbers
Numbers for this year's Striping 50 will be much more in-line with the norms from previous years, after some outlying data from last year threw off our summary information in 2022. This year, total striping-only sales equalled $129,954,003 down from the astronomical and skewed number of $534,425,922 last year. However, if you compare 2023's figure to the total from 2021, which was $99, 558,922 (the previous fully verified year) it reveals a growth of approximately $30 million.
While that is a sign of growth for this segment, it still doesn't quite bring things back up to the pre-pandemic highs of $204 million in 2020 but is closer to the 2019 total of $139 million. Striping-only sales is a bit of a mystery to try and pin down. What is really trending? It appears that striping is still recovering, and, perhaps, it has been slower to do so than the other segment only categories.
Total sales for all the work done by the contractors who make up the 2023 Striping 50 was $1.583 billion compared to $1.632 billion last year. Once again, while that appears to show a decrease in total company sales for the busiest striping contractors, when viewed in light of the $890 million total from 2021, this year was nearly double that figure.
For 2023 the striping-only sales represented more than 20% of the total sales for the Striping 50 contractors, which is an increase over last year's 18% and the year prior's 19%, and an even larger leap up from 2019's 13% of total sales. This is a healthy sign that despite any possible bad data from 2022, contractor's are seeing more and more profitable work. Our Striping 50 also generated other work in these areas:
47 out of 50 companies did sealcoating jobs
42 companies did pavement repair
41 companies took on paving work
Only 7 companies out of the Striping 50 reported more than 50% of their sales as coming from striping, which means the vast majority of our top contractors were earning a lot of their revenue from other streams. Contractors are showing up to their clientele with the ability and intention to help with a multitude of pavement and maintenance needs, with a lot of overlap.
Profit Margins
The numbers here are, once again, very difficult to make strong sense of in regards to their direction or what they reflect about the market. If you go back to 2019, the oldest year on our graph, 34% of companies claimed greater than 15% margins. And the majority of the top 50 seemed to hover in the mid-margin ranges between 5-10% and 10-15%.
Then things skyrocketed the year before the pandemic, where nearly half of companies reported the highest range of profits, but ever since that year it's been trending downwards for that top tier. That is, until this year's bounce back up to 48% of contractors who now report greater than 15% profits, on par with 2021.
Where things shifted in great contrast with that year, was in the second tier, where 2021 reported only 19% in the 10-15% range, this year's companies shifted that number up to 28%. The true middle tier profiters have lost some ground, as well, to the bottom end. To recap:
Those reporting the highest margins, more than 15%, rose to 48% over last year's 33%
Contractors reporting margins of 10-15% dropped from 37% in 2022, to 28% in 2023
Companies in the 5-10% also saw a significant downturn from 27% in 2022 to 12% in 2023
10% of contractors reported profit margins of between 3-5%, up from just 6% the year before
2% of companies showed less than 3% profits, versus 0% in 2022
Completed Work
Unsurprisingly, all of the Striping 50 reported completing work in parking lots, including 7 contractors who did 100% of their work in that arena. That's one less than last year, but 15 more companies reported than at least 90% of their work was from parking lots. That number was only 12 in 2022. Work on roads and streets generated sales for 36 companies, while 9 contractors indicated they had generated some sales doing work on highways.
The Striping 50's Customers
All 50 contractors work for commercial/industrial customers
45 contractors did work for multi-family residential customers
35 contractors worked for municipal clients
21 contractors reported work for single-family residential customers
only 6 contractors reported other types of customers, including park trails and tennis courts
Replacing the Striping 50's Equipment
The number of companies reporting it would require less than $500,000 to replace their fleet equipment doubled from last year, from 5 to 10. Only a single contractor reported between $500,000 and $1 million. Identical to 2022, 11 companies reported it would require between $1 million and $2 million, and a huge 28 said it would take more than $2 million to replace their fleets.
