Every year, The Sunday Times conducts some research into the most successful mid-market businesses in the country and compiles an in-depth list of the top 250 in current form. This ranking table is based on the activity of each company’s sales and profit figures, where research company FastTrack look for exceptional growth in these two areas. The exciting news for yacht manufacturing is that Princess Yachts featured well inside the top half of this list at 87th - showing the rest of the UK how much the boating industry is stepping forward.
The 2019 league table features some huge companies such as Travelodge, Arsenal Football Club and The Watches of Switzerland Group - placing Princess in a very elite field. The criteria for being nominated for this prestigious list involves having total sales values between £110m and £700m for the year, and this figure must have grown by at least 5% year on year, alongside a similar growth in operating profit. To fulfil these criteria, a company must have to be pretty special.
Talking Princess Yachts in particular, they recorded a total sales value of £274.4m for their trade year ending December 2017. Alongside this came a profit of £10.9 million. These figures place them up above internationally recognised brands like Wagamama and West Ham United Football Club. These sales records were calculated at an increase in 27%, but even more impressively, their profit figures were a 268% improvement on the previous year. In response to making the Top Track Table, Princess announced that their current order backlog is valued at £750m - meaning they could feature a lot higher up this list in the years to come.
The Plymouth-based company was founded in 1965 by David King, and has grown ever since then; currently with an employee count of 2,407, operating in well over 100 countries worldwide. They deal with stylish yachts in all sizes from smaller 35-feet cruisers to their huge 131-feet, triple-deck ‘M Class’ model.
They’ll now be invited to the annual awards dinner where they’ll get the chance to meet other like-minded business that have achieved huge success for 2017/18, and create new partnerships for their international network. We’ll be very interested to see where Princess end up on the list next year...
