Oil, Gas Producers Led in Sales Gains in 2004

Jul. 18–FORT WORTH — With the recent rise in energy production, not to mention prices, it is no surprise that oil and gas companies took the top four spots among Tarrant County businesses with the biggest sales gains last year.

XTO Energy, Encore Acquisition, Range Resources and Quicksilver Resources, all based in Fort Worth, reported annual revenue increases that ranged from 28 percent to 64 percent.

Even J.R. Ewing would have been impressed with numbers like those.

–XTO Energy: Fast-growing XTO spent nearly $2 billion last year to purchase properties from major oil producers including ChevronTexaco. The acquisitions helped XTO increase its daily gas production by 25 percent, to a record 835 million cubic feet. Oil production soared 75 percent, to 22,696 barrels a day. The company’s average price for natural gas was $5.04 per thousand cubic feet, up 24 percent from 2003. Oil prices were up 34 percent, to $38.38 per barrel. XTO has raised its estimate for 2005 production growth. In April, the company said it would boost production by 24 percent to 26 percent, exceeding initial forecasts for a 21 percent to 23 percent increase.

–Encore Acquisition: Acquisitions and additional drilling helped Encore boost oil production by 11 percent, to 9 million barrels for the year, or 24,665 barrels per day. The company, which drills in Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Louisiana and the Rockies, is forecasting production growth of 8 percent to 12 percent for 2005.

–Range Resources: It was a banner year for Range Resources, which reported a 23 percent rise in production and a 13 percent increase in prices. This year, the company expects to boost production by an additional 20 percent.

–Quicksilver Resources: Quicksilver produced 39.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas, up from 34.5 billion cubic feet in 2003. Late in the year, the company delayed completion on several wells in North Texas’s Barnett Shale so it could study recent advances in well-completion technology. That patience paid off. The wells were completed in January and February, and their performance was higher than it would have been otherwise, the company said.

–AmeriCredit: The Fort Worth-based auto lender continued to bounce back from a devastating 2002, when the weak economy resulted in a spike in loan defaults among customers with weak credit histories. Revenue rose 28 percent in 2004, the biggest increase among Tarrant County-based companies outside the energy industry.

–First Cash Financial Services: Arlington-based First Cash saw strong sales growth at its pawnshops and payday advance stores in the United States and Mexico. Revenue also got a boost from the addition of 52 locations. This year, First Cash plans to accelerate its expansion with 60 new stores, which would give the company more than 340 locations by the end of 2005.

–D.R. Horton: In 2004, D.R. Horton became the first residential builder to close on more than 40,000 homes in a single fiscal year. The company, which relocated last year from Arlington to the newly renamed D.R. Horton Tower in downtown Fort Worth, has reported 27 consecutive years of sales and earnings growth. With a year-end sales contract backlog of $4.6 billion, up 25 percent from the year before, the growth streak appears likely to continue in 2005.

–Cash America: Acquisitions helped the Fort Worth-based pawnshop chain achieve annual sales growth in excess of 20 percent. In 2004, the company bought 32 cash-advance stores in Southern California and 41 SuperPawn stores in the Las Vegas area.

–Kitty Hawk: In what CEO Robert Zoller described as a “difficult business landscape,” Kitty Hawk raised its fuel and security surcharges to offset rapidly rising costs and boosted its scheduled freight revenue by 21 percent.

–GameStop: Despite an industrywide shortage of Sony PlayStation2 and Microsoft Xbox consoles that hampered the holiday selling season, Grapevine-based GameStop had record sales in 2005. The debut of titles including Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the addition of 338 stores helped. But the real growth is yet to come. The pending acquisition of rival retailer Electronics Boutique will help GameStop expand from a 1,900-store chain into an industry leader with more than 3,800 locations.

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