Almost one in five companies fell out of the group of the 500 best companies last year. According to data from Lider’s long-time partner Dun & Bradstreet (formerly Bisnode), the most common reason for dropping out was loss. Since positive business is a conditio sine qua non for entering the ranking, without profit there is no newly created value.
The data would be even more dramatic if state subsidies for job preservation (up to 4000 kuna per month) were counted as subsidies. They were, in fact, recorded as income. The real picture was also slightly beautified by tax and other reliefs from the state and local government units. However, the results are still significantly worse than in previous years, even after this polishing. Newly created value decreased by a full 17 percent, in line with a 16 percent drop in revenue, exports (–15%) and the number of employees (–14%). Even the best seriously dipped into the safe usually reserved for profit – a 23 percent decrease was recorded. It is normal that all this together affected productivity, which decreased by almost four percent.
The ranking of the 500 best also included 117 new companies. However, the newcomers have a newly created value of 770 million euros, which is significantly less than the 2.24 billion euros that the companies that fell out held the previous year. This difference of 1.47 billion is the largest part of the total decline in newly created value. This also applies to revenues, which are 16 percent lower compared to the previous year. However, companies that remained in the top 500 managed to emerge with a slight decline in revenue, less than two percent. And that stagnation result is actually a success. Namely, the 1000 largest companies recorded almost double the revenue decline of 3.8 percent, while the entire economy recorded a minus of 5.3 percent. Thus, the ranking of the best truly justifies its name. Here is indeed the cream of Croatian business that pulled through the toughest business year in independent Croatia.
However, this year’s newly created value is more modest than in previous years. After all, among the companies that survived among the 500 best, more than half (198 out of 383) reported lower NV than the year before. Therefore, it can be said that we have returned to the level of the 500 best between 2016 and 2017.
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— It is even more dramatic when looking at the newly created value of the winner. HT only needed stagnation (less than one percent lower NV) to jump over the two largest and best banks and rise from third to first place. The result of 245 million euros is convincingly the lowest NV since 2007, when we started compiling the ranking of the 500 best. Until now, winning always required more than 300 million euros. The highest NV was achieved by Ina in 2010 – 589 million euros of newly created value. But HT at least stagnated. Zagrebačka banka remained second only because its NV fell slightly less (36%) than PBZ’s (40%), which slipped from first to third place.
However, the real winner of this year’s ranking is HEP. All five of its companies improved their ranking: alongside the parent HEP, which climbed from seventh to fourth place with a 22 percent higher NV, HEP ODS advanced from eighth to sixth place, and HEP Proizvodnja is the third representative of the group in the top ten (jumping from 13th to seventh place).
Among the top ten are two more companies in state ownership: Hrvatske šume (jumped from 11th to 8th place) and HP – Hrvatska pošta, which retained the ninth position and remained the strongest provider of postal services. Pliva, as the best representative of traditional manufacturing, maintained fifth place, while the top 10 is closed by the third bank, Erste&Steiermärkische Bank, which slipped from sixth place. OTP banka fell out of the top ten but remained in 13th position, while the largest individual company, Ina, which was fourth last year with an NV of 245 million euros, fell off the ranking because it reported a loss in 2021.
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