- Higher gross profit margins at 22 pct due to better cost management
- Debt to equity ratio (excluding Financials industry) kept low level at 1.29 times at the end of Q3/2015.
Companies listed on The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) reported a net profit of THB 460.24 billion (approx. USD 12.8 billion) from January-September, a 26 percent drop from a year earlier, while sales decreased 10 percent to THB 7.63 trillion during the January-September period.
Aggregate earnings were compiled from 521 listed firms, or 94 percent of the total 553 companies (excluding non-compliance and non-performing groups), in the first nine months of 2015. There were 416 companies making net profits, representing 80 percent of the total listed companies already disclosed their financial statements.
In the third quarter of this year, their sales decreased by 11 percent from the same period last year to THB 2.53 trillion, or a 2 percent decrease from Q2/2015, while net profits worth THB 27.04 billion, 87 percent drops from both Q3/2014 and Q2/2015. Meanwhile, Thai listed companies' financial status remained strong with debt to equity ratio (excluding Financials industry) at 1.29 times.
SET Executive Vice President Santi Kiranand said, "The overall performance of the Thai listed companies in the first nine months were affected by a drop in net profit and sales due to losses from special items dragged by significant drops in steel and crude oil prices in the Energy & Utilities, Petrochemicals & Chemicals and Steel sectors. However, excluding companies in those sectors, the aggregated sales of listed companies in January-September recorded a one-percent increase, and net profits increase of 5 percent year-on-year, owing to their effective cost managements."
There were four sectors that reported both growing sales and profits in the January-September period and in Q3/2015 compared to the same period last year. These were Commerce, Health Care Services, Information & Communication Technology, all of which corresponding to domestic consumption, as well as Automotive sector recently recovered from exports.
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