Turkey’s Second Top 500 Industrial Enterprises 2022 survey made by the Istanbul Chamber of Industry reveals SMEs displayed a much better performance in turnover and profitability despite high inflation, financing constraints, and economic slowdown. Production-based sales of Second Top 500 enterprises increased by 104.8 percent when compared to the previous year and reached TRY 694.8 billion. The total pre-tax profit-loss of these companies increased by 98.2 percent.
In addition to strong domestic demand and export growth, the rise in inflation and exchange rates played a decisive role in this high rate of increase.
Adjusted for the CPI, the real increase was 24.7 percent, while when adjusted for the PPI, which is considered the real inflation rate of industrialists, this rate drops to 3.6 percent.
Export growth overtook the Top 500
Despite the weakening global economy, Turkey’s exports increased by 12.9 percent to USD 254.2 billion in 2022. Exports of the Second Top 500 increased by 19.3 percent to USD 16.1 billion. The export growth rate of the ISO Second 500 was higher than that of Turkey and the ISO 500. This is significant in terms of demonstrating the success of relatively smaller and medium-sized organizations in expanding into foreign markets. As a result of these developments, the share of the ISO Second 500 in Turkey’s industrial exports increased by 0.3 percentage points from 6.2 percent to 6.5 percent in 2022.
Return on assets hit an all-time high
The return on assets of the ISO Second 500, which is calculated by dividing the profit and loss for the period by total assets, increased by 1.7 points to 11.4 percent in 2022. This ratio has been the highest since 1997 when the Second Top 500 statistics began to be shared. In the same period, return on equity fell by a negligible 0.2 percentage points to 25.5 percent.
