The Indiana Business 100: uncovering good economic news in the results of the state's top public and private companies.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Special Feature

EAGER FOR SOME GOOD Hoosier economic news? You'll find it in the pages that follow

Displayed on those pages are statistics by the hundreds detailing the health of 100 leading Indiana companies--50 of them publicly traded and 50 privately owned. The story in the numbers is one of growth, in both revenues and profitability

Public companies, of course, offer the most detailed glimpse, as their results are by definition open to public scrutiny. The 50 largest Indiana public companies collectively charted significant growth between 2002 and 2003.

Combined revenues for this top 50 were. $80.7 billion, up an impressive $10.1 billion or 14.3 percent over 2002. Even more important was the change in profitability. Our top 50 companies collectively lost a lot of money in 2002--nearly $2 billion. But in 2003 they were substantially back in the black, reporting profits totaling just over $8 billion. These 50 companies' net income rose from an average loss of $39.3 million to a $160.1 million profit in one year.

It's a little harder to draw conclusions from our list of the top private companies. These businesses are under no obligation to share their revenue figures with us at all, and many of those that do choose to round their sales figures a bit. But it still is possible to get some idea of the economic temperature, and the story among Indiana's largest private companies also seems to be one of growth, albeit a bit slower.

Revenues of this group of 50 totaled $26.5 billion in 2003. That's up about 3 percent from the year before when the same companies shared...