KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 8): Eleven Malaysian outfits have made it to the Forbes Asia’s 2021 Best Under A Billion list, which recognises 200 top-performing publicly listed small and midsized companies in the Asia-Pacific region with sales under US$1 billion.
The Malaysian companies in the list are Comfort Gloves Bhd, D&O Green Technologies Bhd, Dancomech Holdings Bhd, Dufu Technology Corp Bhd, FoundPac Group Bhd, Frontken Corp Bhd, Revenue Group Bhd, Scientex Bhd, Thong Guan Industries Bhd, UG Healthcare Corp Ltd and ViTrox Corp Bhd.
Forbes Asia said despite the global spread of Covid-19, this year’s annual Best Under A Billion list highlighted the resilience of 200 publicly listed small and midsized companies in the Asia-Pacific region with sales under US$1 billion.
It said their sound financial figures reflect how well these companies coped in the midst of a global pandemic, with healthcare and pharmaceutical-related companies being standouts, while tech and logistics firms linked to the global e-commerce boom also benefited.
On its methodology, Forbes Asia said the list is meant to identify companies with long-term sustainable performance across a variety of metrics.
It explained that from a universe of 20,000 publicly traded companies in the Asia-Pacific region with annual revenue of above US$10 million and below US$1 billion, only 200 companies were selected.
It said the companies on this list, which is unranked, were selected based on a composite score that incorporated their overall track record in measures such as debt, sales and earnings-per-share (EPS) growth over both the most recent fiscal one- and three-year periods, and the strongest one- and five-year average returns on equity (ROEs).
Aside from quantitative criteria, qualitative screens were used as well, such as excluding companies with serious governance issues, questionable accounting, environmental concerns, management issues or legal troubles.
State-controlled and subsidiaries of larger companies were also excluded.
Source: The Edge Markets