The Top 100 Companies market capitalisation decreased by 11% in the year to March 2023, at USD 30,86 trillion, the first significant decrease since 2009, according to PwC’s Global Top 100 companies by market capitalisation analysis. Between April 2021 and March 2022, the market capitalisation stood at USD 34.7 billion.

"The evolution reflects the difficult context for equities due to continued fiscal policy tightening and record inflation, coupled with uncertainty in the US and European banking sector. In the Romanian equity market, the top five companies by capitalisation are dominated by the energy and banking sectors, with most companies seeing a decline in market value in 2022 compared to 2021. The ranking could change this year with the listing of Hidroelectrica, Romania's largest green electricity producer. The listing of Hidroelectrica could mark the largest initial public offering in Romania, and possibly in Eastern Europe, generating a high level of interest from foreign institutional investors," said Dinu Bumbăcea, Country Managing Partner PwC Romania.

Despite a surprising rally in Q1-23 for technology, the sector recorded an 8% YoY decline, the first decline recorded for ten years.

It was also a poor year for Financials and Consumer Discretionary, accounting 56% of the total fall in market capitalisation, driven by exits and performance.

Companies featuring within the Industrial sector performed well with market capitalisation increasing 45%, mainly aided by four new entries into the Top 100.

Energy fell 12%, with varied performance amongst the seven Energy companies in the Top.

Despite a volatile macroeconomic backdrop, Europe experienced YoY growth of 9,5%, the only region to do so, moving up to the second spot in the regional list. This was attributable to four new entries and the notable performance in Denmark (+40%), Germany (+18%) and France (+17%).

The US saw a 12% drop in the market capitalisation of companies, but retained its top place by region with the most companies included in the ranking.

China and its regions market capitalisation decreased by 7%, despite welcoming one new entrant into the Top 100.

The rest of the world faced a challenging year with three exits from the Top 100 and the decrease of market capitalisation of an Energy company, based in Saudi Arabia.

Winners versus losers

The top five remain unchanged: Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet and Amazon, but they contributed 50% of the decline in total market capitalisation. All the top five market capitalisation dropped since last year with the highest drop of 36% for Amazon, followed by 28% for Alphabet.

Despite the overall slowdown for the technology sector, Microsoft maintained its second position in the list and for the first time since 2016, Apple’s market capitalisation fell YoY.  Saudi Aramco experienced a significant 18% drop in value.

As of 31 March 2023, the top ten companies were completed by NVIDIA, Berkshire Hathaway, Tesla, Meta Platforms and Visa Inc.

The largest increases in market capitalisation were reported by Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Merck & Co (USA) and Deutsche Telekom (Germany), while the largest decreases were reported by Tesla, Amazon.com and Intel Corporation.

About the report

The full report can be found here. The ranking includes the top 100 companies worldwide by market value as at 31 March 2023.

About PwC

At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 156 countries with over 328,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

© 2023 PwC. All rights reserved.