Business Insight Zone

[Programming note: while we make some improvements to the Hoover's Index and its dedicated page, we'll be running posts here talking about some of the interesting companies from the top of the monthly list.]

Performance Food
Performance Food may not be a household name, but the food and foodservice distributor topped our most recent Hoover’s Index after Blackstone Group and Wellspring Capital Management agreed to take it private in a deal worth $1.3 billion. The private equity firms plan to combine Performance Food with Vistar, which owns Roma Food Enterprises and supplies many Italian restaurants around the country. Despite its relative obscurity, the Virginia-based Performance Food is the #3 broadline foodservice distributor in the US (behind SYSCO and U.S. Foodservice); it supplies about 41,000 restaurants, schools, and hospitals across the Eastern and Southern US. Performance Food’s top customers include Cracker Barrel, Outback Steakhouse, and T.G.I. Friday’s.

Quebecor
Stop the presses! Canadian media company Quebecor made the wrong sort of news in January, when its Quebecor World unit — one of the world’s largest commercial printers — filed for bankruptcy protection. Quebecor World accounts for more than two-thirds of its parent company’s revenues; Quebecor’s other businesses include cable TV (Vidéotron), newspaper publishing (Sun Media), and French-language TV broadcasting (TVA). Quebecor World, which specializes in printing magazines and retail inserts, maintains more than 115 printing facilities, primarily in the North America, but also in Europe, South America, and India. Before it filed for bankruptcy, the company had tried to negotiate a huge bailout package, but to no avail.

Weatherford International
The long run-up of crude-oil prices over the past few years has cast a brighter spotlight on companies throughout the oil and gas industry, including services companies like Weatherford International. The firm, which brings in more than $6.5 billion in annual revenue, supplies a wide range of equipment and services used during oil and gas drilling. Weatherford also provides pipeline services and contract land drilling services. The company’s multi-year program of acquisitions and divestments have paid off in a big way: in January it reported outstanding results for the last quarter of 2007, when it enjoyed strong performance in the Eastern Hemisphere (especially Europe and West Africa), where Weatherford has aggressively expanded its operations.