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Looking for a hot stock? How about a company whose revenue has shot from $455,000 to $68 million in three years? Or from $209,000 to $24 million in three years? Or $662,000 to $40 million in three years?
You don't see revenue growth like that often from companies trading in the stock market. And, in fact, these companies are not publicly traded, at least not yet. The three -- Cedar Point Communications, Genoptix Medical Laboratory and Santur -- are ranked Nos. 2, 4 and 12, respectively, on this year's Inc. 5,000, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.
They're also the top three on Inc.'s list of 100 companies that intend to go public, so savvy investors will want to keep an eye on them. Genoptix, for instance, has already filed for an initial public offering.
For more than 25 years, the Inc. 500 -- beefed up this year to the Inc. 5,000 -- has been the home of future household names. Microsoft (MSFT, news, msgs), the publisher of MSN Money, made the list in 1984 at No. 80, when the world learned that the company's revenue had grown 1,969% between 1979 and 1983. Microsoft made the list again in 1985 and then went public in March 1986. Now it has a market cap of about $275 billion, and its annual revenue has gone from $50 million when it first made the Inc. list to $51 billion last year.
Oracle (ORCL, news, msgs) made the list from 1983 through 1985, and Gateway (GTW, news, msgs) was No. 1 or No. 2 from 1991 through 1993.
For a chance to get in on the next Microsoft or Oracle, keep reading. Here is Inc.'s list of the 20 fastest-growing companies that intend to go public. Some have already filed for IPOs, but most haven't. For the rest of Inc.'s top 100, click here.
More from MSN Money and Inc.com
1. Cedar Point Communications
What it does: makes telephone switches, including a residential-line switch that cable giant Comcast (CMCSA, news, msgs) buys in bulk.Why it's growing: Comcast. "We started with one market, cable television; one application, residential voice; and one relatively large telecom customer in the U.S. that hadn't launched VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) yet," CEO Andy Paff says. The eggs-in-one-basket strategy worked.
| Details | |
|---|---|
Headquarters | Derry, N.H. |
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | 2000 |
2003 revenue | $455,204 |
2006 revenue | $68.1 million |
Growth | 14,853% |
2. Genoptix Medical Laboratory
What it does: provides medical-lab services to community-based hematologists and oncologists, and offers software applications that facilitate the administration of diagnostic tests.Why it's growing: because of a highly specialized focus on the hematology/oncology niche, backed by software tools that speed up patient care.
What's noteworthy: It's one of two laboratories in the country to offer the CellSearch System, the only Food and Drug Administration-approved test to identify circulating tumor cells in patients with metastatic breast cancer.
| Details | |
|---|---|
Headquarters | San Diego |
Industry | Health |
Founded | 1999 |
2003 revenue | $209,000 |
2006 revenue | $24 million |
Growth | 11,392% |
3. Santur
What it does: Santur's tunable lasers and transmitters (priced at $1,000 and $1,500, respectively) allow companies to expand the bandwidth capacity of fiber-optic lines by increasing the spectrum of wavelengths that a cable will recognize.Why it's growing: The need for bandwidth is exploding thanks to video, and the way to provide it cheaply is with devices that permit added wavelength programmability.
| Details | |
|---|---|
Headquarters | Fremont, Calif. |
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | 2000 |
2003 revenue | $662,620 |
2006 revenue | $40.4 million |
Growth | 5,995% |
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4. Vizio
What it does: manufactures and sells flat-screen, high-definition televisions.Why it's growing: The Consumer Electronics Association projects 15.7 million HDTVs will be sold in 2007, up from 2.1 million in 2002. By manufacturing overseas, Vizio can offer high-quality TVs at relatively low prices.
| Details | |
|---|---|
Headquarters | Irvine, Calif. |
Industry | Computers and electronics |
Founded | 2002 |
2003 revenue | $17.3 million |
2006 revenue | $676.6 million |
Growth | 3,807% |
5. Doba
What it does: Web-based service lets small Internet retailers link to wholesale suppliers of products from DVDs to power tools to bamboo rugs.Why it's growing: Chalk it up to that ballyhooed Long Tail. Doba's software gives its customers access to more than 1 million products.
| Details | |
|---|---|
Headquarters | Orem, Utah |
Industry | Software |
Founded | 2002 |
2003 revenue | $229,000 |
2006 revenue | $7.6 million |
Growth | 3,202% |
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