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Last year, margins fell drastically for increasingly smaller and fewer projects. Notwithstanding a rise in the cutoff for the list by almost $10 million, as a group, the firms on the 2010 Top 50 electrical contractors list earned $12.7 billion in 2009, a 4.5% drop from 2008. Of the 37 firms present on last year’s Top 50 list, 11 reported a year-over-year increase in revenue for electrical and datacom services, with only four reporting a jump of more than 20%. By contrast, of the 26 firms that suffered a drop in revenue, nine revealed a decline of more than 20%. Together, the 37 firms experienced an average year-over-year decrease of 5.7%.