Wink Companies, which ranks No. 40 on this year’s roster of the Capital Region’s Top 100 Private Companies, probably will never make the list again.
That’s not to say the company won’t have the revenue; it reports taking in $89 million in 2008, a 7.2% jump from the previous year. Instead, Wink’s engineering business was bought out earlier this year by Houston-based Willbros Group. Technically, Wink no longer is locally owned and is ineligible for ranking after 2009.
But officials say the firm’s 200 or so local employees, including the full management team, aren’t going anywhere.
“The reason we won’t change is they [Willbros] have nothing in their internal organization that competes with what we do,” Senior Vice President Andy Farris says. “We were bought to continue to do what we do.”
Joseph and Ann Smith Wink founded Wink, Inc. in 1970 in a 400-square-foot office above their garage on Cove Street in New Orleans. That tiny consultancy serving New Orleans-area refineries grew into a regional engineering firm with more than 600 employees.
Farris opened Wink’s Baton Rouge office in 2001 along with Capital City natives Randall Collier and Kevin Steed. Wink enjoyed a good reputation in the area, Farris says, but it had trouble sustaining work from the New Orleans home base.
The Baton Rouge office shared work with New Orleans at first, but quickly started to gain market share. Wink had more than 100 local employees by the time Hurricane Katrina arrived in 2005. As with so many other businesses, Katrina changed everything for Wink.
The company’s headquarters in eastern New Orleans was on relatively high ground and sustained only minor water damage. But the building lacked electricity until January 2006 and had no communications for more than a year, Farris says. Within a week after the storm, the Wink family decided to move their headquarters to Baton Rouge.
“The only way we could get to our building was by boat for the first week or so,” Farris says. “We never wanted to be that vulnerable again.”
Wink puts a lot of focus on retrofitting and de-bottlenecking projects. Last year, CEO Larry Wink told Business Report the company was doing a lot of work for refineries, which were “expanding like they never have before.”
But with falling fuel prices and a weak economy, refineries have cut back their spending. While 2008 was busy through the first three quarters, 2009 has been flat—though Farris says a slight uptick is possible toward the end of this year.
“We’re still doing small maintenance-type projects, but a lot of the new expansion has been curtailed,” Farris says. “Things just keep getting pushed back. The work’s there, but they keep holding it. I think they’re just trying to guard their cash.”
While expanding in the middle of a recession might seem odd, Willbros officials say the fundamentals of their areas of the energy industry, including the midstream pipeline and downstream refining sectors, are strong. They say the deal will allow them to perform engineering, procurement and construction in-house.
Collier says Willbros projects $1.1 billion in revenue this year. Wink will be part of InServ, Willbros’ downstream division acquired in November 2007.
“For us, [the acquisition] filled a strategic need to be able to offer that integrated solution that starts with engineering and goes all the way through the project cycle,” says Mike Collier, Willbros’ vice president of investor relations, sales and marketing. “We did not have, until this acquisition, the downstream engineering capability that they bring.”
Being able to give customers price and schedule certainty on projects might be even more valuable in an economic time when credit markets and profit margins are tight. Collier says Willbros got to know Wink well before the deal was made.
“They are a name in the industry and have a good reputation, and we have touched them and the projects that they’ve been involved in multiple times over the years,” Collier says.
Wink employees were no doubt a little nervous about getting bought out, but Farris says a presentation by Willbros’ senior management helped relieve some of that anxiety. Farris says the deal has already led to new client relationships in Alaska and the Rocky Mountain region.
“We believe it will open new markets for us geographically,” Farris says, leading to an increased workload and better job security.
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