These publicly traded companies are based in RI. Here's how they're doing on the stock market.
PROVIDENCE − From the third floor of a former Mexican restaurant in Newport, a team works to coordinate over 60 ships across the world, moving salt from Egypt to Fall River, trundling through ice in the Arctic to bring iron ore to the market, moving dry goods across the world – just to name a few.
Inside the office of Pangea Logistics Solutions, models of many their ships are encased in glass, including the "ice class" ships that traverse through shipping passages frozen shut much of the year, much of them serving an iron mine in northern Canada.
Based in Newport, Pangea Logistics Solutions might seem like a small operation, but its offices are scattered across three continents, in Denmark, Singapore, Greece and Newport. The publicly traded company has created a niche for itself in the bulk goods shipping industry, with a heavy presence in Arctic shipping. It's also a publicly traded company, with its books open to banks and investors.
The company is one of a few publicly traded ones in Rhode Island, often best known as the home to CVS or Hasbro. In all, Rhode Island is home to 10 publicly traded companies, meaning their stock is traded on a stock exchange and can be purchased.
What are those companies, where are they located and how have they done over the past year?
Rhode Island's 10 publicly traded companies
Rhode Island's publicly traded companies are listed below, ranked by revenue. Other ways of calculating the size of a company include the number of employees or its market capitalization rate, which is the number of shares multiplied by its stock price. Both figures are present below.
Market capitalization still has CVS at the top, but bumps Textron to the second slot. The company with the second-highest revenue, United Natural Foods, drops to fifth place when sorted by capitalization.
The 52-week high and low was taken from the week ending Oct. 27, 2023.
1. CVS (CVS: NYSE)
Headquarters: Woonsocket
52-week low: $66.10
52-week high: $104.83
Market capitalization: $85 billion
Revenue: $322 billion
Number of employees: 259,500
CEO: Karen Lynch
Founded in 1963 in Lowell, Massachusetts, the company started building its headquarters in Woonsocket in 1981 and has remained there every since. The retailer takes the top spot in Rhode Island, and is the sixth largest company in the world, according to Fortune Magazine's Fortune 500, which bases its ranking on revenue, coming in behind Walmart, Amazon, Exxon Mobil, Apple and UnitedHealth Group.
Overall, the company has 259,500 employees, according to Fortune. It went public in 1996.
Helena Foulkes, who ran for governor, was the company's chief health care strategy and marketing office from 2011 to 2018, when she became the CEO of the Hudson's Bay Company.
2. United Natural Foods (UNFI: NYSE)
The distributor of organic, natural and specialty foods, United Natural Foods, is second on the list with $29 billion in revenue. The company moved to Providence, in the American Locomotive Works complex, in 2009, from Dayville, Connecticut. The company's most recent purchase was grocery wholesaler SuperValu in 2018. It is Whole Foods' largest supplier.
United Natural Foods has two beginnings. In 1976, Michael Funk started Mountain People's Warehouse in Auburn, California, while a year later, Norman Cloutier opened Cornucopia Natural Foods in Coventry, first as a retail store, and then as a food distributor. In 1996, the two companies merged, forming United Natural Foods, and went public on the Nasdaq. In 2018, the company moved to the New York Stock Exchange.
The company is ranked 139 on the Fortune 500.
Headquarters: Providence
52-week low: $14.12
52-week high: $47.88
Market capitalization: $831 million
Revenue: $29 billion
Number of employees: 29,445
CEO: Sandy Douglas
3. Textron (TXT: NYSE)
Listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1947, Textron has its headquarters in the fifth tallest building in the state in downtown Providence. Started in Boston, the company moved to Providence in 1930.
The conglomerate focuses mostly on defense and the aerospace industries and owns Bell Aircraft Corporation, known for its helicopters, the Cessna Aircraft Company, known for its small planes, and in 2022, purchased the Slovenian company Pipistrel, the builder of electric airplanes.
The company is 318 on the Fortune 500.
Headquarters: Providence
52-week low: $74.55
52-week high: $81.39
Market capitalization: $14 billion
Revenue: $12 billion
Number of employees: 34,000
CEO: Scott Donnelly
4. Citizens Bank (CFG:NYSE)
Citizens Bank, also known as Citizens Financial Group, started as the High Street Bank in Providence, turning into the Citizens Savings Bank in 1871 before being bought in 1981 by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In 2008, the United Kingdom bailed out the Royal Bank of Scotland, worth £45 billion. Citizens Bank then went public in 2014 following pressure from the United Kingdom's finance minister to sell it. The price of stock at its initial public offering, or IPO, was $21.50.
The company lists its official headquarters as Providence, at One Citizens Plaza, a 13-story office building. It also operates a 126-acre campus on Johnston, where 3,000 people work. Its prior corporate campus was in Johnston, and has been partially turned into a Top Golf facility.
The company is 419 on the Fortune 500.
Headquarters: Providence (Johnston)
52-week low: $22.77
52-week high: $44.82
Market capitalization: $10 billion
Revenue: $9 billion
Number of employees: 18,889
CEO: Bruce Can Saun
5. Hasbro (HAS: Nasdaq)
Founded in 1917 in Providence, Hasbro started as Hassenfeld Brothers, Inc., the manufacturer of pencil box covers from scrap cloth, then pencils, until 1942, when the company started to focus just on toys. In 1952, Hasbro introduced Mr. Potato Head. It was the first toy advertised on network TV and the company's first big hit and spurring its growth.
Hasbro went public in 1968 and acquired rival toy company Milton Bradley in 1984. It has been bumped off of the Fortune 500 listing, landing instead on the Fortune 1000 at 585.
Headquarters:Pawtucket
52-week low: $45.52
52-week high: $73.58
Market capitalization: $6.4 billion
Revenue: $5.9 billion
Number of employees: 6,490
CEO:Chris Cocks
6. Bally's (BALY: NYSE)
Originally known as BLB Investors, the Woonsocket-based casino company Bally's has had a few name changes. In 2011, after going through bankruptcy, it changed its name to Twin River. It then completed a reverse merger with the Dover Downs Gaming & Entertainment in 2019, putting it on the New York Stock Exchange. It then bought the rights to the Bally's name in 2020 from Caesars Entertainment.
The company has casinos in 10 states. It ranks 914 on the Fortune 1000 list.
Headquarters: Woonsocket
52-week low: $8.56
52-week high: $25.67
Market capitalization: $395 million
Revenue: $2.3 billion
Number of employees: 10,500
CEO: Robeson Reeves
7. Washington Trust (WASH: Nasdaq)
Founded in 1800, Washington Trust is the oldest community bank in the nation. It recently agreed to a $9 million settlement agreement with the federal government over allegations of racial discrimination allegedly for not opening branches in predominantly Black and Hispanic areas.
Headquarters: Westerly
52-week low: $21.69
52-week high: $50.93
Market capitalization: $370 million
Revenue: $1.1 billion
Number of employees: 651
CEO: Edward Handy III
8. Pangea Logistic Solutions (PANL: Nasdaq)
Co-founded in 1996 by the late Edward Coll and Claus Boggild as Bulk Partners Ltd., the company quickly grew into a customer-focused bulk goods shipping company, eventually becoming the dominant player in the Acrtic shipping business with one of the largest fleets of "ice class" ships.
CEO Mark Filanowski said they fill the niche of a customer-focused shipping company, sort of the difference between UPS and a courier company, finding solutions for customers on either end of the shipping process with loading or offloading goods to their final destination.
The company went public in 2013.
Headquarters: Newport
52-week low: $5.88
52-week high: $7.24
Market capitalization: $274 million
Revenue: $700 million
Number of employees: 150
CEO: Mark Filanowski
9. AstroNova
AstroNova is a company that completes data visualization for the aerospace industry, including airborne printers, label machines and testing and measurement machines. The company was founded in 1969 by Albert Ondis and Everett Pizzuti as a company that manufactured measurement recording devices, including some used by NASA.
The company went public in 1984.
Headquarters: Woonsocket
52-week low: $12.74
52-week high: $17.21
Market capitalization: $98 million
Revenue: $142 million
Number of employees: 529
CEO: Gregory Woods
10. KVH Industries
KVH Industries is, like Pangea Solutions, a company that taps into Rhode Island's naval heritage. Serving the boating industry, the company started with a digital compass in 1982 and quickly expanded into the world of navigation systems and satellites, and now manufactures marine communication systems.
The company went public in 2004.
Headquarters: Middletown
52-week low: $4.48
52-week high: $12.1
Market capitalization: $88 million
Revenue: $139 million
Number of employees: 350
CEO:Brent Bruun
Why isn't General Dynamic Electric Boat on the list?
General Dynamics (GD: NYSE), which manufactures nuclear submarines under the name General Dynamics Electric Boat, might have a huge presence in Quonset Point (125 acres) but the company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, and the Electric Boat division is headquartered in New London, Connecticut, where the half of the submarine manufacturing is done.
The defense contractor is a little below its 1-year stock price high of $256.86, but has risen precipitously since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.
If it were included on the list, it would be the second biggest company, behind CVS Health, with revenue of $39 billion and a market capitalization rate of $66 billion. Across the company, it employs 106,500 people.
The company employs 6,300 people at its Quonset Point facility and is on track to hit its goal of hiring 1,500 people this year. The total Electric Boat workforce is 21,500, meaning Quonset Point is a third of that total. Submarine hull modules are fabricated and outfitted in Rhode Island, then shipped to Groton, Connecticut or Newport News, Virginia, for assembly, Director of Communications Daniel McFadden wrote in an email.
Rhode Island's biggest employers
While Rhode Island might be the headquarters to some truly massive companies, like CVS, the state's biggest employer is the hospital system Lifespan, with over 10,000 jobs in the state, followed by CVS and Care New England.
Check out Columnist Mark Patinkin's story on the state's biggest employers for more on the top employers in the state.
The biggest employers: RI was once the jewelry capital, but who are the state's largest employers today?
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Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: 10 RI businesses on the stock market - Hasbro, CVS, and more
