Jollibee, Puregold, RRHI on Asia’s “Fabulous 50” list

HOMEGROWN fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp., grocery chain operator Puregold Price Club and multi-format retailer Robinsons Retail made it to Forbes Asia magazine’s “Fabulous 50” List of the region’s best publicly traded big companies.

These three Philippine companies are part of the 2016 annual honor roll highlighting some of the brightest stars in the Asia Pacific region, joining the likes of China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.

This year marks the 12th edition of the “Fab 50” list and the 272 companies that have appeared on the list at least once reflect the changing nature of business in the Asia Pacific region, Forbes Asia said in a statement on Thursday.

Back in 2005, five wireless telecom companies were represented; this year, there was none. That inaugural list also saw 11 tech hardware companies, while only six made the cut this year. On the other hand, no property developers joined the roster in the first three years but they have been well represented since.

For six years in a row, companies from China dominate the “Fab 50” list, with a total of 22 companies. Leading the charge, Alibaba was not eligible for the list until this year when the company met the requirement of being publicly traded for at least a year. It debuts with an impressive market value of $242.5 billion and profit of $11.2 billion.

Meanwhile, last year’s most valuable company, Tencent, valued at $233.2 billion, is now second.

The “Fab 50” companies are selected from a pool of 1,524 public companies in the region with at least $1.7 billion in annual revenue. Companies were analyzed using a battery of more than a dozen financial measures. The list excludes companies that have a debt ratio of more than 50 percent or where the government owns at least half of the shares.