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Hyflux among 11 S'pore firms that make it to Forbes Asia list

HYFLUX, OSIM and Sincere Watch are among 11 local firms that have made it to a list of the 200 best small companies in the region, in a ranking by Forbes Asia magazine.

Singapore ties with China and Thailand for fifth place in a league table of Asian economies with the best showing in this year's list, the magazine said yesterday.

Japan leads the way with 38 of its companies listed among Asia's best, while Australia is second with 25. Hong Kong and Taiwan tie for third with 22 each, and India is fourth with 20.

Besides media darlings such as Hyflux and OSIM, the other Singapore companies to make the list include computer peripherals firm Brilliant Manufacturing, computer services provider Mentor Media and maritime companies Chuan Hup Holdings and Jaya Holdings.

They join well-known Asian brand names such as China's Tsingtao Brewery, Jollibee Foods from the Philippines, Malaysia's AirAsia and Satyam Computer Services from India.

The ranking draws from the region's over 25,000 publicly-listed companies but considers only those with sales of between US$5 million (S$8.5 million) and US$1 billion.

This list is whittled further using criteria such as net income, pre-tax margin, return on equity and earnings per share.

Individual company information is also reviewed to compile the final 200.

'The Asia-Pacific region is alive with small- and medium-sized enterprises that reward not only their founders and other insiders, but also public shareholders,' Forbes wrote in its Oct 20 issue.

Nearly all the companies in the list pay dividends, compared with their United States counterparts which frequently do not, it added.

Forbes also compiles a list of the 200 best small companies in the US.

The Asia-Pacific list also values both growth and consistency, for example, looking at five-year averages for earnings per share growth and return on equity.

This means that in tech-heavy Asia, only a handful of computer electronics firms made the list as such companies tend to go through boom-and-bust cycles.

Across Asia, many of the companies that made the cut were from fast-growing industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and maritime.

This is the first year the list has been expanded to include 200 companies, double the previous years' 100.

The Singapore companies listed last year were HTL International Holdings, Jaya Holdings, Meiban Group, Sincere Watch, United Overseas Insurance and plastics firm Fu Yu.

audrey@sph.com.sg