This year's ranking includes 35 companies from the Baltic States: five from Latvia, nine from Estonia, and 21 from Lithuania.
Latvia is ranked last in the CEE Top500 this year in terms of the number of companies represented in both the Baltic and CEE regions, according to Coface Baltics.
Latvenergo JSC is the highest-ranked Latvian company in the CEE Top 500 - 151st. The company has moved up 16 positions in the ranking compared to a year earlier and can boast a 10% increase in turnover and a 91% increase in profits. The ranking also includes LLC Rimi Latvia (300th position), LLC Maxima Latvija (302nd), JSC ELKO Grupa (311th) and LLC Orlen Latvija (425th).
These five Latvian companies have a turnover of €6.072 billion and a profit of €452.12 million in 2023. Last year, they employed a total of 13,189 people, which is about 1.5% of the total workforce in Latvia.
Compared to the previous year, the number of Latvian companies represented in the ranking remained unchanged, in Estonia the number dropped from 13 to nine, and in Lithuania from 22 to 21.
Commenting on Latvia's performance in the Top 500 ranking, Coface Baltics economists point to problems related to both too slow a shift away from Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and insufficient economic diversification.
Poland leads the Coface Baltics CEE Top500, with 184 companies in the country in the ranking, with a total turnover of EUR 512.894 billion in 2023. Poland has been leading the top 500 for several years. Although Poland also boasts the largest population, it is notable that the turnover of the companies included in the ranking increased significantly last year by 11.9% compared to the year before, as did the number of companies - by 18.
