The PAN Group, for the first time ever, has made it among the 10 fastest growing companies in Vietnam.

The 500 fastest growing companies were named in the FAST500 ranking by Vietnam Report on February 28. PAN ranked sixth.

According to Vietnam Report, the companies were ranked according to their compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of revenue, and their profitability in the last four years. The ranking also takes into account total assets, total employment, net profit, and the company’s prestige in the public eye, as well as market share in terms of competitors in the same field.
This is the third year that PAN was featured on the FAST500 list. Its position rose from 91 in 2015 to 47 in 2016 and 6 in 2017. The PAN Group reported a revenue of VND284 billion ($12.43 million) in 2012, which it boosted to an astounding VND2.75 trillion ($120.4 million) in 2016.

A survey of Vietnam Report on the FAST500 companies shows that market demand and market trends were the most important factors affecting the growth of companies in the last five years, as this was the category most companies marked them as “very important” (66.7 per cent).
When asked about priorities in their 2017 business strategy, revenue/profitability growth in current markets, the introduction of new products/services, and improving productivity were the three top priorities, as picked by 80.8, 61.5, and 53.8 per cent, respectively.
However, companies also predicted many obstacles ahead that could prevent them from achieving their growth objectives in 2017, such as the increasing price of raw materials, increasing labor costs/difficulty in recruiting talented individuals or the rise of competitors in the same industry.
In last year’s FAST500 survey, companies chose further decreasing corporate income tax, more administrative reforms, and reducing credit interest rate as the three most awaited policies in 2016.
For this year’s survey, instead of reducing credit interest rate, companies would rather see improvements in the regulatory environment, showing that this problem is now more pressing than lending interest rates.