China's top 500 firms post record revenue

The top 500 Chinese companies posted a record high total revenue of 45.5 trillion yuan (US$6.63 trillion), which was up 14.8 percent from a year earlier, Fortune magazine’s Chinese edition reported on Wednesday.

Net profits of these 500 companies added up to 3.625 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.21 percent, which was slower than the 24.24 percent surge last year due to weaker macro-economic performance.

The annual revenue threshold for companies on China’s Fortune 500 list this year rose 17 percent to 16.238 billion yuan. Of note, the total revenues of the 500 companies were again higher than half of China’s GDP that exceeded 90 trillion yuan last year.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), Petrochina and China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited remained unchanged at the top, with revenues of 2.89 trillion yuan, 2.35 trillion yuan and 1.3 trillion yuan, respectively. Their profits were 63.09 billion yuan, 52.59 billion yuan and 38.24 billion yuan, respectively.

Ping An Group held the top spot for non-state-owned enterprises this year.

The top 10 most profitable companies are China’s “Big Four” banks — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and the Bank of China — while China Mobile, Ping An Insurance, China Merchants Bank, Tencent Holdings, Bank of Communications and Alibaba Group together posted profits of 1.46 trillion yuan, accounting for 40.3 percent of the 500 companies’ profits.