Internet

South Africa’s biggest company is among the world leaders shaping the digital economy

Staff Writer

 ·21 Sep 2018

Forbes this week published the inaugural Digital 100 list, a ranking of the top 100 public companies that are shaping the digital economy.

Companies were scored on a variety of factors including sales, profits, assets growth and performance of the stock over the past year.

The list offers a closer look at the technology, media, digital retail, and telecommunication companies that shape the digital world. Not surprisingly, Amazon secures the top spot on the list. Amazon.com is classified as a retail company, Forbes said.

And while retail makes up most of the company’s $108.3 billion revenues, its cloud computing division brought in $17.5 billion or 16% of sales last year.

Netflix, the leader in internet subscription streaming services, is No. 2. Nvidia Corporation (No. 3), Salesforce.com (No. 4) and ServiceNow (No. 5), round out the top of the list.

Forbes’ Digital 100 includes companies from all the different corners of the digital economy. IT software & services companies make up 35% of the list. Following close behind are technology hardware and equipment companies with 26 companies and semiconductor companies with 23 companies.

Companies come from 17 different countries with the US and China in the lead. Forty-nine American companies make the list, while China comes in second with 16 companies. Of the top 20 companies on the list, 17 of them are from the US Thirty-four of the companies on the list are from Asia.

South Africa is represented by media giant Naspers, which is rated 82nd overall. The company entered PwC’s Global Top 100 ranking of companies by market cap earlier this year, ranking 79th, with a market cap of $107 billion as at the end of March 2018.

The country’s biggest company has since grown its market cap to R1.4 trillion.

Earlier this week, Naspers announced plans to list its video entertainment business, Multichoice, separately on the JSE and simultaneously unbundle the shares in this business to its shareholders as the group faces increasing competition from streaming services like Netflix.