Numbers don't lie; it pays to be big

Deltek’s annual FedFocus event is always full of great numbers as it tracks the ups and downs of the market.

The data guru at the event is Kevin Plexico, and he has a well-deserved reputation for ferreting out which agencies will be spending more and why.

This year, he added a new wrinkle to his presentation: a breakdown of contract dollars by company size.

His analysis puts data behind the perception that the largest companies dominate, but there is an interesting trend going on.

In 2014, 55 percent of contract dollars went to companies with more than $500 million in revenue.

The next highest category was 18 percent of dollars going companies below $25 million in revenue. Companies with $100 million to $500 million in revenue pulled in 15 percent, and the final 13 percent went to companies in the $25 million to $100 million revenue category.

Plexico also did the analysis back to fiscal 2009, and the change is noteworthy.

In 2009, the dominance of the over-$500 million companies was even more pronounced. They pulled in 61 percent of the prime contract dollars. The under-$25 million received 14 percent.

Things changed significantly for the top and bottom categories. It’ll be interesting to see if we see more of a change going forward. I hope Plexico continues to track this data.

But one data point he didn’t include that maybe he will in the future is the number of companies in each revenue category.

Just using our Top 100 as a base, there are only 39 companies with more than $500 million in prime contracts.

While Plexico and the Top 100 probably aren’t using exactly the same data parameters to determine what companies have more than $500 million in annual revenue, there probably isn’t a huge difference in our totals.

The data doesn’t lie. It pays to be big in this market.