The Fortune Southeast Asia 500 list is the first to rank the region’s largest companies and reflects a dynamic and rapidly changing region, with a GDP of $4 trillion and core economies growing at a significantly faster pace than those in Europe and the United States.
Southeast Asia is also assuming greater importance in the global economy. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Global 500 multinational companies are shifting more of their supply chains to Southeast Asian countries. Foreign direct investment into the region is surging. And with a young and growing population of 680 million, low inflation rates and stable exchange rates, Southeast Asia is emerging as an attractive market in its own right.
A defining feature of the Southeast Asia 500 is that it is dominated by a handful of giants with operations across the globe, but increased exposure to overseas markets may explain why Southeast Asia’s largest companies saw their revenues fall last year even as the regional economy grew.
The Fortune Southeast Asian 500 companies are expected to see combined revenue of $1.79 trillion in 2023, down $45 billion, or 2.5%, from 2018. Profits are expected to shrink to nearly $130 billion, down $13.9 billion, or 9.6%, from 2022.
The decline contrasts with the relative resilience of the region’s six largest economies: Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines all saw their GDP grow last year, collectively slowing to 4.2% from 5.5% in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund.
A closer look at the list explains the discrepancy: Only five of the Southeast Asian 500 companies were large enough to make the 2023 Fortune Global 500, which has a revenue threshold of $30.9 billion. By comparison, the list included 119 European companies, 136 US companies, and 142 Chinese companies, including those from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
But the top five — which include three Singapore-based commodity trading giants (Trafigura Group, Olam Group and Wilmar International) and two state-owned oil and gas producers (Thailand’s PTT and Indonesia’s Pertamina) — are large compared to their regional peers, accounting for 26% of the revenue of the companies on the list. In 2023, these giants were hit by geopolitical conflicts, supply chain shocks and uncertainty in markets such as China and Europe, with all five reporting lower revenues in 2023 due to weakening global energy demand.
The result: As a group, revenues fell 16%. In contrast, the 495 companies that make up the remaining 74% of the list’s revenues saw their sales increase by about 4%.
Some of the biggest companies grew profits even as revenue declined. Trafigura, by far the largest company on the list, highlights this contradiction, posting record profits of $7.4 billion while revenue fell 23%. In second place, PTT saw its profits increase by more than 23% from 2022 to $3.2 billion, despite revenue falling 6%.
Banks and financial services companies fared well last year. The region’s three largest banks, all based in Singapore, all reported revenue increases of more than 60 percent. DBS Group made $7.5 billion in revenue, making it Southeast Asia’s most profitable company. Nine of the 20 most profitable companies were banks.
Airlines and airports also thrived as the region continues to recover from COVID, with Singapore’s Changi Airport Group nearly doubling its revenue, and Airports of Thailand and Thai Asia Airways seeing even bigger revenue gains.
Consumer internet platforms, hit hard by the pandemic, have rebounded sharply in 2023. But the profit picture is mixed. Singapore’s Sea, which also owns a digital payments provider and runs an online gaming platform, posted its first profit. City rival Grab Holdings cut its losses to $434 million from $1.7 billion a year earlier. Indonesia’s largest “super app” provider GoTo suffered the biggest loss among the companies on the list, slumping to a $5.9 billion deficit. Most of the loss was due to a $4.9 billion impairment caused by GoTo’s sale of a controlling stake in online shopping business Tokopedia to the TikTok unit of Chinese social media company ByteDance.
Trafigura leads the Southeast Asia 500 with revenues of $244 billion. No other company in the region has reported revenues of over $100 billion. Founded in Geneva in 1993, Trafigura has grown into a large trading company with operations in 150 countries, transporting oil, gas, metals, power and bulk commodities worldwide. The company moved its legal headquarters to Singapore in 2012 to take advantage of the country’s low tax rates. Privately held, Trafigura says it has about 1,200 shareholders, most of whom are employees. The company announced in December that it would pay a record dividend of $5.9 billion, or about $5 million per shareholder.
There was less to celebrate at other Singapore-based commodity giants. Wilmar International, one of the world’s largest producers of palm oil, sugar, flour and other foods, reported a nearly 37% drop in profits. Olam Group, which was founded in Nigeria as a cashew nut exporter and moved to Singapore in 1995, saw its profits fall 55%.
The largest manufacturer among the Southeast Asia 500 is Flex, ranked 8th overall with sales of $26.4 billion. Flex produces a wide range of products, including computers, ventilators, auto parts, power tools and vacuum cleaners, in more than 100 manufacturing facilities in 30 countries. Flex was founded in Silicon Valley and is headquartered in Austin, but has been incorporated in Singapore since 1990, which is why it is ranked in the Southeast Asia 500. Flex CEO Revathi Advaiti is one of 30 women currently serving as chief executive officers at Southeast Asia 500 companies.
In compiling the Southeast Asia 500, luck The survey surveyed companies from six of the region’s largest economies plus Cambodia. Indonesia, with a population of 280 million and a GDP of $1.5 trillion, has the most companies on the list with 110. Thailand, with a population of 70 million and an economy of $550 billion, comes in a close second with 107 companies. Singapore, with a population of just 5.6 million, overpowers the Southeast Asian 500 with 84 companies.
Vietnam, one of the region’s fastest-growing economies, has 70 companies on the list, the largest of which is state-owned Petrolimex (ranked 23rd overall) with sales of $11.5 billion.
History-minded readers will see similarities between this list and the first U.S. Fortune 500 list, published in 1955. Like today’s Southeast Asian rankings, the top spots in the first U.S. list were dominated by producers of major commodities: for example, four of the top 10 in 1955 were oil producers and two were steelmakers.
Nearly 70 years later, oil and steel still play important roles in the U.S. economy, but retail, technology and healthcare dominate the Fortune 500. It remains to be seen if or when these industries will replace Southeast Asia’s Big 5, but the Southeast Asia 500 will track their rise and fall as we chart a rapidly changing region in the coming years.
This article appears in the June/July 2024 Asia Edition. luck The headline was “500 noteworthy companies in fast-growing regions.”