Introduction

Eighteen years ago, Prudentia and NASDAQ Riga published their first TOP101 of Latvia’s most valuable companies. Practice now has become a tradition. Despite the Ukraine war and surge in energy prices that affected the majority of the economy, TOP101's value has grown by 5% or 1.4 billion EUR compared to the previous year’s TOP101. This increase, however, is mostly driven by value increases in the 3 most valuable companies. Together they represent an increase of 1.55 billion EUR showing that value distribution has become more centered around the biggest companies in TOP101.

TOP101 Industries

Despite the wood industry coming off its record profitability and valuations from last year’s TOP, this year, the highest concentration of companies included in TOP101 of 2023 remains in the “Manufacturing industry: industrial goods” industry. The concentration increased even further by 2 percentage points with new TOP101 members such as Pulsar Optics, SIA, and Caljan Lsez, SIA who joined this industry’s representation. The next six notable industries show higher concentration than in 2022, which can be represented by the “Other 10 Industries” segment losing 3.9 percentage points compared to 2022 and now accounting for only 24.8% of the entire 2023 TOP101.

In value terms, we can see that in TOP101 2023 ten out of sixteen of the industries have grown compared to TOP101 of 2022 year. The highest growers are “Extraction of natural resources” and “Manufacturing: energy carriers” with 61.6% and 38.7% growth respectively. These increases were driven by newcomer Hawita Baltic, SIA, and a good operational year for Latvijas Valsts Meži, AS, and Latgran, SIA. The largest decreases can be seen in the “Healthcare” and “Trade: energy carriers” industries with -70.2% and -31.6% respectively. These decreases can be explained by the profitability of healthcare coming down after the COVID-19 highs and mixed profitability among energy traders in 2022.

Distribution of TOP101 companies based on capital structure

In TOP101 of 2023, 57.4% of companies are classified as foreign capital companies, representing a 2.9 percentage point increase over the TOP101 of 2022. State capital companies also saw an increase of 1 percentage point to 13.9%. Both increases were at the expense of Local capital private companies. This sector saw a 4-percentage point decrease to 28.7%.

TOP101 Newcomers and Inclusion threshold

This year TOP101 includes 16 newcomers with a total value of 1,267.3 million EUR. The value distribution between newcomers is less concentrated than last year, with the highest value newcomer Discover Car Hire, AS contributing 11% to the total newcomer value. Despite the overall TOP101 value increase in 2023, the inclusion threshold was reduced by 1.5 million EUR or -2.32%. This decrease represents the trend of the overall value of the TOP101 2023 concentration in the most valuable companies in the country. It should be noted that some companies from the previous TOP101 did not provide their financial reports for 2022, which allowed the companies that were previously below the threshold value to successfully get into TOP101 of 2023.