Energy companies top Fortune 500 Turkey list
ISTANBUL
![Energy companies top Fortune 500 Turkey list](http://image.hurimg.com/i/hurriyet/75/0x0/5b3a24525379ff30584824af.jpg)
Energy giants topped Turkey’s Fortune 500 list with oil refinery Tüpraş, owned by Koç Holding, being the champion with a net sales revenue of 53.9 billion Turkish Liras ($14.8 billion) in 2017.
According to the list, which was released on July 2, EPİAŞ, also known as the Energy Exchange Istanbul (EXIST), came in second place with a net sales revenue of 41.2 billion liras ($11.3 billion). It was followed by fuel oil distribution and lubricants company Petrol Ofisi with 40.8 billion liras ($11.2 billion) in net sales.
Turkish Airlines ranked fourth on the list with 39.7 billion liras ($8.6 billion).
Two other energy companies, Turkey’s gas grid Botaş and Opet Petroleum, ranked fourth and fifth in the list, respectively, with 33.5 billion liras ($9.2 billion) and 28.3 billion liras ($7.7 billion) in net sales revenue.
Ford-Otosan, a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and Turkey’s Koç Holding, ranked seventh on the list with 25.3 billion liras ($6.9 billion) in net sale revenues.
BİM discount supermarkets and Arçelik, another Koç Holding company, followed them with 24.8 billion liras ($6.8 billion) and 20.8 billion liras ($5.7 billion), respectively.
Shell & Turcas, another energy company, ranked 10th on the list with a revenue of 19.6 billion liras ($5.4 billion).
The list revealed that the total net sales of Turkey’s top 500 companies rose 29.5 percent year-on-year to hit 1.2 trillion liras ($330.3 billion) in 2017.
Their net profits also surged by 52.3 percent during the same period.
Exports of the leading 500 Turkish companies totaled 286.5 billion liras ($78.7 billion), up almost 30 percent compared to previous years.
In 2017, Turkish Airlines became the top exporter with 34 billion liras ($9.3 billion) in service exports, followed by Ford Otosan and Arçelik with 17.8 billion liras ($4.9 billion) and 15.4 billion liras ($4.2 billion), respectively.
The list includes publicly and privately held companies for which revenues are publicly available. The list is based on the Central Bank’s 2017 average dollar-lira parity at 3.64.