Show them no quarter: taking the long view, many private companies refuse to be held prisoner by Wall Street's shortsightedness.

• Author: Willis, Dail

It's a long way from Wall Street in New York City to Lee Avenue in Sanford--MapQuest says 561 miles. That doesn't stop some of the Street's best and brightest investment bankers from making regular calls on the headquarters of Static Control Components.

"There isn't a six-month period that goes by that we don't hear from at least one," CEO Ed Swartz says. "Different ones come. But you put them in a bag and shake them up, they all pretty much look the same. They're fee-based hustlers, let's face it. These guys think they're the greatest salesmen in the world."

But not even the siren song of America's most ambitious financiers has swayed Swartz, 69, into taking his company public. Static Control has been privately held since he started it in 1986, and he plans to keep it that way. "A public corporation is a beast driven by quarter-to-quarter results. We can't afford the luxury of trying to maximize results each quarter."

Static Control is on track to generate $350 million in revenue this year. It's No. 17 on the North Carolina 100, the annual ranking of private companies that Grant Thornton LLP compiles for BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA. The list is based on 2004 revenue, and participation is voluntary. "Distribution and manufacturing still dominate the list," says Alan Day, the accounting firm's partner in charge of the ranking.

Indeed, five of the 10 companies on the list that grossed $500 million or more last year were manufacturers: National Gypsum, Klaussner Furniture Industries, National Textiles, Parkdale Mills and Lord. The top 10 included two distributors: General Parts and Baker & Taylor; two restaurant chains: Golden Corral and Bojangles' Holdings; and the world's largest privately owned software developer: SAS Institute.

For some companies, an initial public offering can pay off debt, fuel growth or turn a founder's sweat equity into cash. Pike Electric, No. 15, went public in July, but it's on this year's list because it was privately held on Dec. 31, 2004, the cutoff date. The $126 million it netted from its IPO will help the Mount Airy-based electrical contractor pay debt from an acquisition and a recapitalization.

In an economy with an appetite for corporate supersizing, why would any owner pass up the opportunity to dig deep into investors' pockets? Reasons vary, but some CEOs of private companies have a fierce aversion to outside interference. Staying independent, they say, frees them to make decisions for long-term growth, the unspectacular and steady kind that brings true value to a business.

Privacy and control--the agility and freedom to make all business decisions--are often key factors, Day says, and companies think "hard and long" before inviting the public into the house. Listening to some CEOs of companies on the North Carolina 100, you might begin to wonder why any company would choose to go public.

National Gypsum, ranked fifth, has lived in both worlds. Once based in Dallas, the wallboard maker moved to Charlotte in 1993 after emerging from a bankruptcy reorganization that let it shed asbestos-related liabilities. It went public, and Delcor Inc.--the investment company owned by the family of C.D. Spangler Jr., the billionaire financier who was then president of the University of North Carolina--acquired 19% of its shares. The investment led to a merger bid that turned into a takeover, which National Gypsum shareholders approved in September 1995.

"It was very complicated and not easy to do at all," Chairman and CEO Tom Nelson says. "Going from a public company to a private one is time-consuming, often difficult and expensive." Delcor decided National Gypsum could best realize its growth potential as a private company. Nothing has happened since to change that. "We're fortunate to have a very solid, long-term group of investors that don't have a need for liquidity," says Nelson, who is Spangler's son-in-law. Having the headquarters of Bank of America and Wachovia in Charlotte doesn't hurt, he adds. "There's a trillion dollars in capital sitting at Trade and Tryon streets."

There can also be competitive advantages to staying private, and increased corporate scrutiny by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators in recent years has sharpened that edge. "You don't have to broadcast to the world what you're doing," says Tom Ogburn, director of the Winston-Salem-based Wake Forest MBA Family Business Center. "Many private or closely held companies are reluctant to talk about their finances, their structure, their ownership."

If your competitors are public, the advantage gets even bigger. "As a private company, you've got clarity on how all your public competitors are performing, and yet the public competitors don't have clarity on what you're doing," Nelson notes. He reads his competitors' SEC filings regularly.

So does Dale...