Top 10 Bulgarian companies = 1/2 Petrom

The top 10 Bulgarian companies are worth a total of €5.56 billion, meaning 60 percent the value of Romanian oil giant Petrom, the largest company listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

By the end of 2006, the value of Bulgaria's 100 largest companies amounted to €7.05 billion, or 70 percent of the total public companies in that country. Based on this calculation, Bulgarian companies are worth a total of €10 million.

Top. The top five companies, according to Dnevnik, are an industrial conglomerate, Chimimport holding, former state-owned Bulgaria Telecom (BTC), recently purchased by U.S. AIG financial group, the Sofarma pharmaceutical company, the DZI insurance company, and oil distributor Petrol.

This classification was made on the basis of total income, earnings, market capitalization, capital profitability and liquidity. Chimimport is the largest company in terms of revenue, at €828.95 million, followed by Petrol, at €670.84 million.

Capitalization. However, as far as market capitalization is concerned, BTC is the largest Bulgarian company, with a capitalization worth €1.53 billion as of July 31. This figure accounts for 13 percent of the total value of companies listed on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange. Moreover, the capitalization of the top five companies is 41 percent of the entire Bulgarian capital market.

ROE
The average return on equity (ROE) for companies in Bulgaria is estimated at 23.76%, with only one in five companies reaching this amount. ROE of some 40% of Top 100 companies is lower than 10%.