San Miguel Corp., PLDT among 8 PHL firms on Forbes list of world’s biggest public companies

With sales at $5.6 billion, profits of $0.5 billion, assets worth $18.8 billion and market value of $6.3 billion, San Miguel Corp. is one of eight Philippine firms on the Forbes list of 2000 world’s biggest public companies.   San Miguel is ranked 1,085^th while at 1,165^th place is local telecom giant PLDT and at 1,343^rd is SM Investments Corp., the holding firm of the SM Group of Companies.

The Bank of the Philippine Islands is 1,565^th , Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. is at 1,860, and BDO Unibank is 1,966^th. Power distributor Meralco is 1,900th.   Aboitiz Equity Ventures, the holding and management company of the Aboitiz Group of Companies, is 1,712^th.   Forbes editor Scott DeCarlo said the list is compiled “by screening Interactive Data, Thomson Reuters Fundamentals and Worldscope databases via FactSet Research Systems for publicly traded companies.”   “Using these databases as our primary sources of data, we screen for the biggest companies in four metrics; sales, profits, assets and market value. Our market value calculation is as of March 16 closing prices, including all common shares outstanding,” DeCarlo added.   The data are from latest 12 months worth of financials.   DeCarlo said the downloaded data goes through “quality-check” and cross-referenced with other sources “including Bloomberg and available company financial statements.”   The final list of 2000 starts out as separate lists for sales, profits, assets and market value.   “Each of the 2000 lists has a minimum cutoff value in order for a company to qualify: sales of $3.7 billion, profits of $239.2  million, assets of $ 7.34 billion and market value of $4 billion,” DeCarlo said.   “A company needs to qualify for at least one of the lists in order to be eligible for the final Global 2000 ranking,” the Forbes editor explained. — Earl Victor Rosero, GMA News