Fortune Turkey and ISO 500 lists

and the Istanbul Chamber of Industry (IS•) 500 lists FORTUNE TURKEY were announced in the previous weeks. Last week, IS• also published the IS• II 500 list that mainly included SMEs. IS• lists are focused on manufacturing companies, whilst the Fortune Turkey list covers a wider spectrum of industry, services and other segments. Thus, Fortune’s list excludes financial corporations and holding companies. Both lists are produced with great effort and are benchmarks for the Turkish business community. They are based on official figures.

Both lists have differences. The IS• list is purely industry focused. It includes mostly the main exporters and represent the main body of employment. The IS• 500 list and Fortune 500 Turkey, even though they include many different but also some common corporations, gave the same signals this year. Profits on the IS• 500 list soared by 15.3%. IS• Chairman Erdal Bahcivan emphasized, however, that the gap between Turkish economy and global industry was growing, citing the PMI data the chamber publishes with HIS Markit. He also noted the high inflation rates that prevent new investments. The IS• 500 list also pointed to the growing capex rates that eat into the profits. The slowing expansion investments of industrial companies was also raised as an issue.

Added to this rather bleak picture, Fortune 500 Turkey research conducted by CRIF Turkey shows the deepening of the slowdown in the economy and the meltdown in the profits. As you will read on our back cover, the revenue increases of Turkish companies have come down from 31.8% in 2018 to 14.9% in 2019 and 6.3% in 2020. Even though total turnover increased, profits were down by a significant 15% among Fortune 500 Turkey companies. The losses are mainly due to the volatile forex rates, which hit financial expenditures hard. Employment also showed a small contraction among Fortune 500 companies, which is important to note as the Turkish economy is growing at over 5%. It notes that the growth in the economy isn’t creating new jobs. The total of the Fortune 500 Turkey turnover is half of Walmart, the number one company in Fortune 500 U.S. list.

However, there are companies like Hepsiburada.com that are taking firm steps to become global. The online retailer floated its shares on Nasdaq last week, becoming the first Turkish company on the tech focused exchange. The company was valued at USD 3.9bn in the IP• and it saw a valuation pf more than USD 4bn. Anadolu Efes is another Turkey-based global company, the fifth biggest brewer in Europe and 10th globally. Its CE• Can Caka tells us the global growth path of the company in our cover story. Serefe!