FLOURISHING FAST 40: Many middle-market businesses are experiencing success and growth during the current economic climate.

MIDDLE-MARKET BUSINESSES IN NORTH CAROLINA have enjoyed a prolonged period of growth and economic success. This round table brings together several of the fastest-growing, mid-market companies to talk about successes, challenges and the future.

WHAT'S AN OVERVIEW OF THE FAST 40 THIS YEAR?

HORSTMANN The Fast includes middle-market companies with revenue sizes ranging from $10 million to $500 million, give or take, across any industry you could possibly think of.

Especially this year, it continues to surprise me as we see growth not just in a particular industry. North Carolina flourishes across multiple industries. Manufacturing and distribution tend to get a dominant share when you think about North Carolina, but it's about 20% of the revenue for the state.

We went through and interviewed more than 70 applicants this year. We spent time getting to know businesses, understanding what they were doing from a growth perspective. For me, it was like being a sponge, getting to hear from you guys and learn what you were doing to help grow your practices across the state.

WALTON What's exciting to me is to see not just a lot of Charlotte- and Raleigh-centric companies. There are so many companies that are in some of these smaller areas within North Carolina that may or may not be benefiting from our state's economy and where it is nationally. People are bootstrapping and doing neat things in some areas that you wouldn't expect across the state. It's exciting.

HOW HAS BUSINESS BEEN OVER THE LAST YEAR?

ELKIN We manufacture and distribute building products, and the construction industry has been really buoyant. We don't sell much to commercial and industrial. It's mainly single-family and multifamily residences and residential projects. We sell through lumberyards and big-box retail and people like that. Our business benefits because we operate in the South.

We're in Mobile, Ala.; Gulfport, Miss.; Charleston, S.C.; Raleigh and Charlotte. Those are all growth markets. So we benefited a lot just from growth in our geographic-market area. We're privately held, and it makes us a little more nimble. So business has been good.

We hear a lot about the economy, and we're very cyclical in our business, so we watch that very closely. I think our politicians will talk us into a recession if we don't actually want one or need one. Most of [the] customers we've polled are still feeling pretty cautiously optimistic through deep into 2020 at this point.

So we're pretty excited about what the future holds, at least over the next 18 months.

WALTON We've had clients reach out to us who are in industries like specialty retail [and] are experiencing growth like they've never had. They're asking us, "Is this something that's just specific to the markets that we're in? Because industry news says this is bad, but we are feeling good about it."

So it's just being real cautiously optimistic about everything, which has been the case for a while. Still it feels like you're inching closer to that cliff just because the news continues to be persistent. What I've been preaching for the last year is, you may see slow growth, but it's still growth. It may be more strategic, but people are still very optimistic about what's down the road.

LOCKHART For BioDelivery Sciences, it's really been a tremendous year for us so far in that we're seeing the continual quarter-over-quarter increase in our prescription growth, which indicates that we're really having a positive impact in being able to provide a therapeutic solution to our chronic pain patients.

We're able to do that by way of our primary product: Belbuca. It's scheduled as a Schedule 3 drug versus a Schedule 2...