Two Filipino firms were included in Forbes Asia’s elite group of the region’s best large publicly traded companies for 2015, dubbed the “Fabulous 50” list—“an annual honor roll highlighting some of the brightest stars in the Asia-Pacific,” the business magazine announced yesterday.
Returning to the list this year was fastfood behemoth Jollibee Foods Corp., which started as an ice cream shop in 1975 and has grown to more than 2,000 branches nationwide, outnumbering international rivals such as McDonald’s and KFC in terms of local branch network.
All told, Jollibee has 2,933 branches, including those overseas, and the company has plans of opening up to 330 more branches this year.
This year, Forbes Asia included in its coveted list for the first time the holding firm of taipan George Ty involved in the power, automobile and real estate businesses.
According to Forbes, GT Capital secured its spot on the Fab 50 list after the company’s share price rose by nearly 45 percent over the past year, during which its revenues also rose by more than a third. “Strong sales at its subsidiary, Toyota Motor Philippines, was the main reason for GT Capital’s strong showing,” said Forbes.
The Philippines matched fellow Southeast Asian countries in the number of listed companies included in the Fab 50. Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore each had two firms on the list, while Indonesia had one.
The Fab 50 companies are selected from a pool of 1,116 publicly listed companies in the region with at least $3 billion in annual revenue or market capitalization. Companies must be publicly traded for at least a year. As such, Chinese online commerce portal Alibaba, which listed last September, will get its first chance next year.
“Companies are analyzed for a long series of performance measures, including revenue, profits, return on capital, share price movements and outlook,” Forbes explained. “The list excludes companies with too much debt or where the government owns at least half of the shares. The result is the region’s best of the best.”