An index of corporate financial performance
Corporate financial performance improved marginally on average in 2Q23. But the number of ‘zombie’ companies has more than doubled over the past year, suggesting a new wave of financial restructuring and dealmaking is near.
Discover which countries and territories are performing among the best. Assess financial performance across sectors. Identify distressed companies. Compare your company’s financial performance against tens of thousands of public companies around the world. KPMG’s Financial Performance Index (FPI) is designed to be one of the clearest indices of corporate financial performance.
For investors, financiers, regulators and governments, the KPMG FPI seeks to provide insights into the relative strength and health of key markets and sectors. With millions of datapoints going back to 2017, these long-term trends can help you spot signs of improvement or impending distress.
Updated quarterly, this webpage allows you to interact with the data to analyze shifts, trends, and related opportunities. You’ll also find key highlights from the most recent quarter and a spotlight on fast-moving industry sectors.
Corporate financial performance improved marginally in the second quarter of 2023, with the average KPMG FPI score rising from 89.37 in 1Q23 to 89.90 in 2Q23 globally.
South America emerged as the best-performing region with a KPMG FPI score of 92.7, followed by Asia at 91.43. Oceania experienced a second consecutive quarter of large drops, with KPMG FPI falling from 72.19 to 67.20 q-o-q.
Companies headquartered in Canada and Brazil enjoyed the greatest increase in KPMG FPI scores. Those with headquarters in Australia and Sweden saw the biggest declines, falling by 7.82 and 4.56 percent respectively. It is the second consecutive quarter of large gains for Canada and notable declines for Australia.
Chemicals and Manufacturing remained the top performing sectors, while Raw Materials and Natural Resources, Pharmaceuticals, Agriculture and Husbandry, and Trading Companies and Distributors showed signs of recovery in 2Q23.
There was a notable increase in ‘zombies’ in 2Q23, from 1,161 to 1,271, representing around 4.08 percent of companies in the study.
Corporate financial performance improved slightly in the first quarter of 2023, with the KPMG FPI rising from 88.67 in 4Q22 to 89.37 in 1Q23 globally.
Asia emerged as the best-performing region with a KPMG FPI score of 91.40, followed by Africa at 90.57. The largest drop was experienced by Oceania where KPMG FPI fell from 76.21 to 72.19 q-o-q.
Companies headquartered in Canada and Vietnam enjoyed the greatest growth in KPMG FPI scores. Those with headquarters in Türkiye and Australia saw the biggest declines, falling from 97.11 to 91.43 and 75.41 to 71.22 respectively.
Chemicals and Manufacturing emerged as the top performing sectors, while Raw Materials, Pharmaceuticals Healthcare, and Technology and Telecommunications showed signs of recovery in 1Q23.
There was an increase in ‘zombies’ in 1Q23, from 1,082 to 1,161 representing around 3.39 percent of companies in the study.
Globally, corporate financial performance declined in the fourth quarter of 2022, with the KPMG FPI falling from 89.89 in 3Q22 to 88.60 in 4Q22.
Asia was the top performing region with a KPMG FPI score of 91.28, followed by South America at 91.20. All regions except Europe experienced a dip, with the largest drops in North America (from 81.82 to 78.75 q-o-q).
Companies with headquarters in Mexico, Poland and Switzerland witnessed the greatest growth in KPMG FPI. Those with headquarters in Canada and Vietnam saw the greatest declines, falling from 39.9 to 27.68 and 91.32 to 83.39 respectively.
Top performing sectors were Chemicals and Transportation and Logistics. Sectors such as Utilities and Life Sciences Tools and Services showed recovery in 4Q22.
There was an increase in ‘zombies’ in 4Q22, from 772 to 1,082, representing around 3.104 percent of companies in the study.
Sector performance
Raw Materials and Natural Resources was one of the sectors that experienced the strongest improvements in FPI scores in the June quarter with a 2.02 percent growth in FPI score, rising to 87.03. However, this score is still quite low, and the sector is yet to recover completely. The sector was mainly driven by strong performance in the Metals and Mining subsector (up 2.10 percent to 86.41 in 2Q23).
Similarly, the Agriculture and Husbandry sector also experienced strong growth Agriculture and Husbandry rose by 1.68 percent to 91.97, reflecting an improvement in the financial stability of the sector.
On an annual basis, Life Sciences Tools and Services, as well as the Aerospace and Defense sector, witnessed the strongest growth of any sector with rises of 0.56 and 0.52 percent respectively. During the same period, the greatest declines were experienced in the Industrial Conglomerates sector (down 2.69 percent) and the Packaging Products sector (down 1.47 percent year-over-year).
Sector performance across regions
In 2Q23, the Manufacturing and Healthcare sectors enjoyed notably strong performance in South America (96.26) and Asia (95.79). At the other end of the scale, 2Q23 saw globally distressed sector Media and Entertainment post challenging results in Europe and Oceania with a KPMG FPI score of 53.22 and 81.06 respectively.
Overall, Oceania witnessed the most distress with 17 of 21 sectors reporting a KPMG FPI below 90. This was due to declining performance in Life Sciences Tools and Services (74.49), Biotechnology (75.86), Chemicals (76.05), and Pharmaceuticals (77.6).
Zombies
Zombies are companies close to default (scoring 0 on the KPMG FPI) for three or more consecutive quarters.
The number of zombies increased 9.47 percent this quarter (from 1,161 in 1Q23 to 1,271 in 2Q23). Year-over-year, the number of zombies has more than doubled (from 622 in 2Q22). Many of these companies may already be experiencing distress or working through restructuring strategies.
In 2Q23, sectors with the highest proportion of zombies included Technology and Telecommunication (with 15.4 percent zombies), Biotechnology (13.7 percent), Raw Materials and Natural Resources (11.80 percent) and Pharmaceuticals (7.70 percent).
What is the KPMG FPI?
TThe KPMG FPI distills a range of market and financial performance indicators into a single index covering nearly 40,000 public companies around the world.
The index scores companies on a scale of zero to 100, with zero indicating serious distress and 100 being best performing.
Since many companies tend to perform well for most of their lifespans, there is a natural bias towards a higher quartile score. As such, around 80 percent of the companies in our index score between 85 and 99.
As the KPMG FPI is a logit2 model, a drop below the average can very quickly lead to an index score of zero.
When exploring this data, therefore, readers should consider:
- The absolute score (0 to 100)
- Comparisons across geographies
- Comparisons across sectors
- Relative performance against peers
- Trends over time
- Macro events which are driving trends
- Expected macro events which may affect future scores
Read more about our methodology
Want to see your company’s score?
To understand your company’s current index score, or to uncover deeper insights about specific markets or segments, contact your local KPMG member firm. KPMG’s global network of KPMG professionals have the data, sector and geographic expertise to help you understand your score and tie it back to your business needs. Whether it is benchmarking, identifying targets, comparing sectors or looking for trends over time, KPMG professionals can connect you right to the information you need to capitalize on your opportunities. That’s our business. Please contact us at in-fmkpmgfpi@kpmg.com to find out more.
Regional performance
South America witnessed mild growth (up 2.88 basis points) driven by an upsurge in the performance of Brazil-headquartered companies (from 88.15 to 92.73 quarter-over-quarter) followed by Chile-headquartered companies (from 91.79 to 93.08 in 2Q23).
Oceania and Africa experienced the largest declines, falling by 4.99 basis points and 1.35 basis points respectively.
Country and territory performance
An analysis of the KPMG FPI country data indicates that, over the year ending 2Q23, the largest gains in KPMG FPI were experienced by companies headquartered in Canada (19.46 percent), Brazil (5.20 percent), Vietnam (3.65 percent) and India (3.16 percent).
Those headquartered in Australia and Sweden saw a decline in average KPMG FPI scores over the year, falling by 7.82 percent and 4.56 percent respectively.
Distressed countries and territories
Given the natural bias for the KPMG FPI to score well-performing companies at high levels (typically between 85 and 99), this index provides significant opportunity to spot distressed companies that fall outside of the normal range.
By linking market and financial performance indicators together in a single index, the KPMG FPI differentiates between market-wide drops and company underperformance.
In 2Q23, the KPMG FPI identified 2,086 companies with a KPMG FPI score of zero. Low-ranking companies were most common in USA (686), Canada (364), Australia (274) and Sweden (126).
For significant underperformance, please see Zombie section.
Methodology
The KPMG Financial Performance Index measures the financial health of individual companies. Based on an initial pool of more than 40,000 companies globally, KPMG FPI identifies those companies, sectors, regions, countries and territories that are performing well and those that are underperforming. A higher score on the KPMG FPI represents strong performance.
The KPMG FPI model draws from the Logit Probability to Financial Default model (developed by John Campbell, Jens Hilscher and Jan Szilagyi), which is based on eight explanatory variables encompassing financial and market variables, to arrive at the overall financial health of a company. The KPMG FPI is based on raw data from S&P Capital IQ database.
We release our insights publicly every quarter. However, the model can be run on any given day to reflect live market changes, so please reach out to your local KPMG member firm or contact us at in-fmkpmgfpi@kpmg.com if you would like additional information.
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Related content
1A distressed company is one having a KPMG FPI score of 0.
2In statistics, the logistic model (or logit model) is a statistical model that models the probability of an event taking place by having the log-odds for the event be a linear combination of one or more independent variables.