Native corporations report record combined revenues

The regional corporations -- with home bases ranging from Juneau to Barrow -- generated $6.9 billion in revenue in 2008, the most recent year for which data from all of the firms was available.

That's a record amount -- an 18 percent increase in revenue from 2007 and a more than 100 percent increase since 2004, according to the report released Monday by the ANCSA Regional Association, a league of the regional corporations created by Congress in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The 1971 federal law settled Native claims to most of Alaska's land, creating the Native-owned companies and seeding them with land and cash.

It took decades, but the regional corporations and some village corporations also created by ANCSA have become dominant figures in the Alaska business scene, with their hands in many industries, including mining, construction, oil and gas development and government contracting. The companies' reach has expanded to the Lower 48 and overseas, to a large extent due to their contracting business, which has flourished under by the U.S. Small Business Administration's 8(a) program. The program enables Native firms and tribes to bid for federal contracts of any size -- some without competitive bidding.

All of the regional corporations and nine other Alaska Native organizations are on a list of the 49 biggest Alaska-based companies based on revenue, said Will Anderson, who heads the ANCSA Regional Association and is the chief executive of Koniag Inc., one of the 12 corporations. He was citing analysis by the Alaska Business Monthly, a magazine that produces the annual list.

Anderson presented the findings to a Anchorage Chamber of Commerce luncheon in downtown Anchorage on Monday.

He said the 12 firms' combined profit was $260 million in 2008 -- less than their combined profit in each of the previous three years. A big reason for their income drop in 2008 was the stock market crash that crushed their sometimes substantial portfolios of stocks and bonds, he said.

Some of the corporations, including Anchorage-based Cook Inlet Region Inc., didn't generate a profit that year due to their investment losses. But, Anderson said, "We actually fared pretty well as a group."

That year, the 12 firms and their affiliated companies employed 35,430 worldwide, with a total payroll of $1.68 billion and average compensation of $47,000.

Roughly 40 percent of those jobs were based in Alaska, and 10 percent of the Alaska jobs were held by the corporations' shareholders, according to the report.

Alaska Native corporations have been buffeted lately by complaints that they aren't producing enough benefit for their shareholders.

According to the association's report, the 12 firms paid a combined $171 million in shareholder dividends in 2008, an increase of 37 percent from the previous year. The companies' dividend payouts accounted for 66 percent of their combined profits in 2008.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.