Inside Hunt Companies: From Military Housing to $37B Holding Company with Woody Hunt (#433)

Hunt Companies' discipline on liquidity and fixed-price contract risk, learned from a 1974 near-collapse, enabled it to profit from 2008's deflation and scale into a diversified holding company.

• Family firm's origin: Hunt Companies began in 1947 as a $50,000 El Paso hardware and building-materials business, going public in 1969 at $3.50/share, raising roughly $1.35 million.
• 1974 inflation shock: Runaway Vietnam-era inflation hit fixed-price contracts and a record backlog, costing Hunt about 25% of its equity and forcing layoffs.

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