TOP101 prove: building a valuable company takes years of work, but the fruits of that labour last a long time 

Villu Zirnask

Head of Finantsuudised.ee

This year's TOP101 of Estonia's most valuable companies is already the seventh in a row – the first was published in 2019. In the intervening years, a great deal has happened and changed both in Estonia and around the world. Has this also been the case for the TOP101?

Let's start by looking at the top three in the ranking over the years.

There is little dynamism here – mainly Eesti Energia, Swedbank and Luminor Bank... Eesti Energia was narrowly out of the top three for a couple of years due to the stock market adventures of its subsidiary Enefit Green, but after delisting it and merging it back into the parent company, it is once again the clear leader.

Tallink, which was in the top three in 2019 and 2020, has regained almost its former momentum after the blow dealt by the coronavirus crisis, but the stock market has been slow to recognise this. Graanul Invest, which made it into the top three in 2022, skilfully exploiting the EU's green policy for its own commercial success in the previous decade, has not been as successful in recent years and has fallen back into the second ten.

If we look at how the top three most valuable companies in the world have changed over the same period, there has been little change in terms of names – Apple and Microsoft are still in the lead, followed by Aramco (the Saudi Arabian oil company) in third place, Alphabet or Amazon, until Nvidia flew to the top with the AI boom, which did not come out of nowhere, but was already in the second half of the global TOP100 in 2019.

So, although the world seems to be changing at a tremendous speed, 6-7 years is still a short time in the context of building a valuable company. If we take a quick look at this year's TOPTech ranking, which reflects the most dynamic part of our economy, Wise, which reigns at the top, was also founded in 2011, and Bolt, which is in second place, in 2013.

To the public, some companies may appear surprisingly in the most valuable rankings, but as a rule, they (or their "components", if the value jumped through mergers) have been operating for years.   

When comparing the change in value of Estonia's TOP101 and the world's 100 most valuable companies (according to PwC Global Top 100 Companies), the value of Estonia's top companies is 1.7 times higher than in 2019, while the value of the world's top companies is 2.0 times higher. The difference in value growth is not that big! Considering the news that has become routine in recent years about how badly the Estonian economy is doing, this is a pleasant surprise. It seems that the values of Estonian companies are moving more in line with global stock markets than local economic news (even though most of these companies are not listed on the stock exchange).