KUALA LUMPUR (July 23): Batu Kawan Bhd and IHH Healthcare Bhd were the only two Malaysian companies to have made it to Forbes Asia’s Fabulous 50 list this year.

The ‘Fab 50’ list is an annual honour roll, highlighting some of the Forbes Asia’s view on Asia Pacific’s best big publicly-traded companies.

Batu Kawan (fundamental: 1.0; valuation: 1.4) has businesses in chemical manufacturing property investment and plantations.

Meanwhile, IHH Healthcare (fundamental: 1.65; valuation: 0.5) operates a network of hospitals that provide premium healthcare services, with key operations in Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey.

Companies from China have dominated this year’s Forbes Asia’s Fabulous 50 list, with 25 names on the list, up from 16 last year.

“The Fab 50 companies are selected from a pool of 1,116 publicly-listed companies in the region, with at least $3 billion in annual revenue or market capitalization.

“Companies are analyzed for a long series of performance measures, including revenue, profits, return on capital, share-price movements and outlook,” said Forbes Asia.

It added that the list excludes companies with too much debt or where the government owns at least half of the shares.

At 11.07am, IHH Healthcare was 2 sen higher at RM5.94, giving it a market capitalisation of RM48.68 billion.

Batu Kawan meanwhile, was down 4 sen at RM18.16, with a market capitalisation of RM7.41 billion.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)