Deloitte Fast 50: 2017 winner basking in building industry's boom

Thursday, 9 November 2017

ZB Homes Bay of Plenty director Zane Beckett (left), operations manager Fiona Flowerday and managing director Rik Flowerday celebrate their Deloitte Fast 50 Index win.

New Zealand's building boom is fuelling the growth of construction companies at an unprecedented rate.

Sales for Bay of Plenty residential building company ZB Homes (Bay of Plenty), have skyrocketed more than 1500 per cent in the past three years.

Chief executive of financial software company Pushpay Chris Heaslip will still be smiling this year after featuring in the Fast 50's top five companies for two years running.

It took out the top spot on this year's Deloitte Fast 50 index, which ranks companies with the highest revenue growth for three years running.

It is the first time a construction company has topped the annual list in its 17-year history.

Rod Drury, founder of Xero, has managed to keep his company's growth at 657 per cent over five years.

Deloitte partner Bill Hale says this year's Fast 50 winners spanned all industries but shared the same strong level of commitment.

* Deloitte Fast 50: Latest category to award sustained business growth

* Deloitte Fast 50: Pushpay NZ's fastest growing company**

Financial technology is proving a sweet spot to be in, too, with digital money lender Moola.co.nz growing about 1000 per cent and online payment company Pushpay seeing about 900 per cent revenue growth since 2015.

Pushpay was last year's winner.

Crimson Education claimed the third spot on the list, with revenue growth just over 1000 per cent.

United States university application consultant Crimson was started by 22-year-old Jamie Beaton. His company was valued at $85 million last year, it is now reportedly worth over $200m.

Online television ratings company Parrot Analytics won this year's Rising Star title, an award given to the best performing company that was typically too young to met the index's qualifying criteria.

New Zealand-born businesses who thought their growth was exceptional submitted their financial statements dated back to 2015 to Deloitte in July in a bid to feature on the index.

To qualify, the businesses had to have made at least $500,000 of revenue in the 2015 financial year and demonstrated ongoing revenue growth for the subsequent two years.

The stakes were higher this year after Deloitte decided to lift the revenue base from 2016's $300,000 minimum.

Last year, winners had to achieve a minimum growth of 225 per cent to make the cut. This year, that minimum threshold dropped to 180 per cent.

The 2017 Fast 50 index winners were announced in Auckland on Thursday.

On average, the 50 companies who made the index were about five years old, had 51 staff and turned over about $11m a year.

Deloitte partner Bill Hale said the awards proved that any type of business, from anywhere in New Zealand, could do well.

Hale said although the index was not industry specific, but the fast 50 company founders all had the same high level of commitment.

A new award introduced this year, the Master of Growth, was won by cloud accounting software company Xero. Its revenue has grown 657 per cent over the past five years.

The standards have almost doubled since the awards first began. The minimum revenue growth of a top 50 company in 2002 was 91 per cent.