Ljubljana, 27 May (STA) - The 300 largest companies in the country generated a total of EUR 45.73 billion in revenue last year, which is 9.7% more than in 2017, while their total net profit was up by 4.1% to EUR 1.77 billion. The largest company in terms of revenue was the fuel retailer Petrol with EUR 4.4 billion, shows a list by the newspaper Delo.
The top 300 companies last year contributed 45.3% of the total revenue generated by Slovenian companies, which is 0.9 of a percentage point more than in 2017.
They meanwhile posted 42.1% of the total net profit made by all companies in Slovenia, up 9.3 percentage points compared to the year before, shows Delo's list published on Monday.
The newspaper notes that the share of profit in total sales has dropped, which means that large companies have started to slowly lag behind small companies in terms of profitability.
According to Delo, large companies obviously knew how to take advantage of two coinciding trends - a steep growth in exports and a growth in domestic consumption.
The list namely includes the largest exporters as well as infrastructural companies which generate most of their sales on the domestic market.
The largest company in terms of revenue, Petrol, is followed by the power producer Gen-I with EUR 2.38 billion and the Renault car assembly plant Revoz with EUR 1.78 billion.
The top five concludes with the national power utility HSE with EUR 1.52 billion and the drug maker Krka with EUR 1.28 billion.
The retailer Mercator is sixth with EUR 1.2 billion, followed by the drug maker Lek, which is the only other company to crack the billion-euro threshold, generating slightly less than EUR 1.1 billion last year.
Krka is meanwhile the leader in terms of net profit (EUR 163.3 million), followed by the national motorway operator DARS (EUR 154.4 million), Lek (EUR 116.7 million) and Petrol (EUR 100.6 million).
Among the top 300 companies, the biggest losses were meanwhile generated by the household appliances maker Gorenje (EUR 126.8 million), the TEŠ thermal power plant (EUR 58.5 million) and the KAD pension fund management (EUR 31.1 million).
Mercator remains the largest employer with 8,264 workers, but is one of the rare large companies which reduced the workforce last year (from 8,576 in 2017).
In terms of the workforce, Mercator is followed by the national postal operator Pošta Slovenije (5,371), Krka (5,002), Gorenje (4,391) and Lek (3,793).