[500 Best] See the Top 10 Companies Leading the List of the Best in Croatia

With this week’s Lider, we offer you a bilingual Croatian-English publication ‘500 Largest‘ in which we present the best companies in Croatia. Among individual companies, Ina is the absolute winner of the business year 2022. It achieved the highest NSV, the highest revenue, the highest profit, and even the highest export. However, a larger export item is recorded by PPD, but that is because the revenue from gas trading in foreign markets is hidden in that category. On the other hand, although the largest exporter, Ina simultaneously recorded more than double the import.

Ina’s 520 million euros in NSV from last year is the fourth-best result since 2007, when we first published the list of the best companies. No one has achieved half a billion euros since 2011, when Ina won with an NSV of 573 million euros, which was only 16 million euros less than it achieved the previous year, with a record NSV of 589 million euros. The magical threshold of half a billion euros was crossed only by HT – 521 million euros in 2007.

The most numerous at the top according to NSV are banks. Behind Ina are three – Zaba, PBZ and Erste, while OTP banka is in eighth position. The other members of the top 10 are loners from telecommunications (HT in fourth position), industry (Pliva – 6), forestry monopolist (Hrvatske šume – 7.) and a retailer (Konzum plus – 9). Therefore, it is not surprising that in yet another excellent year, banks cumulatively achieved the highest NSV again. Retail did not manage to surpass them despite inflation, in which traders know how to swim well.

However, when retail and wholesale are summed up, trade is actually the leading sector with 182 companies in the top 1000, and a share of 15.4 percent in total NSV. Although the new value for traders increased by 10.7 percent, almost keeping pace with inflation, there are actually 11 trading companies less in the current top 1000 than the previous year. Part of the explanation lies in the market consolidation, with the main consolidator Studenac, which ‘swallowed’ Lonija trgovina and Pemo, merged them, and shut them down, thus they fell out of the top 500. Studenac also dropped out, which ended the previous year with a loss of a modest 450 thousand euros after numerous acquisitions, but even the smallest minus prevents participation among the best.

An additional victim of consolidation, or portfolio reorganization, is Trgostil, which was Čakovečki mlinovi shut down after being merged with Trgovina Krk last year. However, the smaller number of traders on the list also shows that this sector operates with low margins and is sensitive to every tectonic disturbance in the market, and now it has found itself under intense state pressure, which demands price reductions only from the last in the chain.

This problem certainly does not trouble bankers. They are ‘drowning in money’, just like in most European countries. Last year, they reported 875 million euros (6.59 billion kuna) in gross profit. The result would have been even more powerful had they not ‘hit the brakes’ in the last quarter – after the introduction of the excess profit tax, they reported only 80 million euros (603 million kuna) in profit, meaning they achieved 90 percent of the annual profit in three quarters!?

At HNB, they estimated that banks, even with the brakes applied, paid 19.1 million euros in excess profit tax for the previous year. And how will it be this year? According to PBZ’s analysis, banks reported a 74 percent increase in interest income in the first half of the year, which is around half a billion euros. Of that, however, interest expenses for deposits of 100 million euros need to be deducted, but profitability continues to grow.

It is estimated that just entering the euro area has brought banks in Croatia an increase in profit of 450 million euros. And due to the rise in interest rates, which were at a historical minimum before last year’s inflation, banks are recording record results in other European countries as well. Therefore, the excess profit tax has already been introduced by Italy, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. This list could expand, but not to Croatia, as there is currently no will for similar ‘selective’, horizontal measures (except in trade). Thus, the two largest domestic banks, Zaba and PBZ, both Italian-owned, are likely to have better results this year than their parent companies. And bankers have ‘generously’ offered to raise interest rates on citizens’ savings deposits.

—

top 10

photo

—

You can read the complete publication of the 500 best on 156 pages along with this week’s digital and printed edition of Lider