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Adelphia Business Solutions best in revenue growth
Sunday, April 09, 2000 By Joyce Gannon, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Say Adelphia, and most people think cable television. But another Adelphia identity has emerged in recent months and, no, we're not talking Adelphia Coliseum, the Nashville football stadium that's home to the Tennessee Titans and Tennessee State University.
It's Adelphia Business Solutions, the company that bought the naming rights to the new Tennessee stadium. But even before it struck the multimillion-dollar deal to raise its profile, it was making a name for itself in financial and high-tech circles.
An independent unit of cable giant Adelphia Communications Corp., Adelphia Business provides telephone and Internet service connections to businesses.
Its sales grew from $39.6 million in 1998 to $154.6 million last year, a whopping 290.4 percent jump, making it the top performing local company last year based on annual revenue growth. It was the No. 5 company based on stock performance, and No. 2 overall, based on its weighted score in all five performance categories.
Although it's controlled by its well-known parent company based in Coudersport, Potter County, Adelphia Business maintains its administrative headquarters in Bridge-ville. It has 2,000 employees nationwide and 233 in the Pittsburgh area.
Prior to October, it was known as Hyperion Telecommunications Inc. The business was founded in 1991 by the Rigas family, which owns Adelphia Communications and controls 57.6 percent of the shares in Adelphia Business.
The major news to emerge from Adelphia Business last year -- and the news that analysts believe sent its stock price soaring the last six months -- was an announcement in September that it will spend $800 million to enter new markets in the Western United States.
It will spend an additional $250 million to build a fiber-optic network to link those markets including Seattle, Salt Lake City and Phoenix.
Adelphia Business currently operates a telecommunications network in the Eastern states that stretches as far west as Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The expanded network should allow Adelphia to tap 65 percent of the business access lines nationwide and give it a presence in 200 markets by the end of 2001.
Closer to home, Adelphia Business in March was named to lead a consortium of 16 companies that will build a telecommunications network for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The network will service state government, state agencies and the State System of Higher Education.
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