2019 CBT 100 Company List released in Beijing

Shen Hanyao, executive chairman of the CBT 100 Company Forum and president of the WEI, pointed out four features of this year’s list.

Shen Hanyao, executive chairman of the CBT 100 Company Forum and president of the WEI, analyses the features of this year’s CBT 100 Company List at the press conference on July 19, 2019. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Overall trend: the CBT 100 companies continue to grow and play pivotal roles in the Chinese economy

Confronted with the complicated and ever-changing economic environment at home and abroad, as well as the new downward pressure on the global economy, CBT 100 companies continued to grow against the trend and harvested glorious achievements. Statistically, the total profits of CBT 100 companies reached 4.4 trillion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 11 percent, equivalent to 95 percent of the total profits of all companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (4.7 trillion yuan). The percentage rose by 6 percent compared with the previous year. In terms of revenue, CBT 100 companies collected 33.7 trillion yuan in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 16 percent, which constituted approximately 37 percent of China’s GDP, up by a moderate 2 percent compared with that of the previous year. CBT 100 companies have been the most powerful driving forces behind economic development in China, as well as the backbones of the Chinese economy to counter external risks.

Regional distribution: the number of companies in western China is growing steadily while the number of Beijing-based companies continues to top the list

In terms of regional distribution, out of the top 500 companies, 69 companies are located in western China, a percentage that has maintained steady growth for four consecutive years. A total of 358 companies are located in eastern China, which continued to dominate the list.

At the provincial level, Beijing continued in top place with 74 companies featured, while Guangdong (70), Shanghai (56), Zhejiang (46), Jiangsu (39), and Shandong (24) ranked from second to sixth. From a dynamic perspective, Shanghai had the largest increase in the number of companies on the list at four, and reversed its declining trend in previous years.

At the city level, Beijing (74), Shanghai (56) and Shenzhen (39) remained the top three cities that accommodated the highest number of top 500 companies, while Nanjing (15), Guangzhou (14), Hangzhou (13), Chengdu (12), and Ningbo (10) ranked from the fourth to the eighth. All the aforementioned eight cities all accommodated over 10 CBT 100 companies; Chengdu is the only city in western China with more than 10 companies on the list.

Industrial distribution: the real estate industry possesses the highest number of featured companies, while the financial industry has the largest profits

In terms of industrial distribution, the five industries in which the highest number of the top 500 companies operated were the real estate industry (55), the financial industry (53, including 25 banks and 28 non-bank financial institutions), the chemical industry (38), the transportation industry (38), and the bio-medical industry (36). The number of featured companies that operated in the real estate industry increased by three compared with the previous year, and this year the real estate industry surpassed the financial industry to top the list.

In terms of profit scale, 53 financial companies that made the list generated a total profit of 2.2 trillion yuan, accounting for 49 percent of the total profits of the top 500 companies (4.4 trillion yuan), which made the financial industry the most profitable. With regards to growth, the building materials industry generated a total profit of 65.6 billion yuan, a 77 percent increase compared with the previous year, making it the industry with the fastest profit growth rate.

Observations of sub-lists: eight noteworthy “star companies”

In addition to the 2019 CBT 100 Company List (main list), the WEI also released four sub-lists - the 2019 CBT 100 Company (Global) List, the 2019 CBT 100 Company (Growth Enterprise Market) List, the 2019 CBT 100 Company (National Equities Exchange and Quotations) List, and the 2019 CBT 100 Company (Highest Growth Rate) List.

The 2019 CBT 100 Company (Highest Growth Rate) List consists of companies that have accrued a total profit of over 100 million yuan for three consecutive years and achieved double-digit profit growth. This year, 280 companies made this sub-list, 27 more than in the previous year. Meanwhile, more than 30 percent of the companies (104) in this sub-list also appeared in the 2019 CBT 100 Company List, eight of them generating a combined profit of over 20 billion yuan. The eight companies are Baosteel Group, China Railway Construction Corporation, Anhui Conch Cement, Gree Electric, Midea Group, Greenland Holdings, Vanke and China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings Co Ltd.