An index of corporate financial performance
Discover which countries and territories are performing among the best. Compare 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.
Globally, corporate financial performance improved in the third quarter of 2022, with the KPMG FPI rising from 89.68 in 2Q22 to 90.68 in 3Q22.
South America was the top performing region with a KPMG FPI score of 93.58, followed by Africa at 93.08. All regions experienced growth, except for Europe, which declined marginally from 89.53 to 89.38 q-o-q.
HQs in Australia and Canada saw the greatest growth in KPMG FPI. HQs in Hong Kong (SAR), China and France saw the greatest decline, falling from 88.51 to 87.30 and 92.61 to 91.47 respectively.
Top performing sectors were Chemicals and Food & Beverage. Sectors including Biotechnology, Energy, and Pharmaceuticals showed recovery in 3Q22.
There was an increase in ‘zombies’ in 3Q22, from 655 to 785, representing around 2.29 percent of companies in the study.
Globally, corporate financial performance declined in the fourth quarter of 2022, with the KPMG FPI falling from 90.68 in 3Q22 to 89.68 in 4Q22.
Africa was the top performing region with a KPMG FPI score of 92.29, followed by Asia at 91.98. All regions experienced a dip, with the largest drops in North America (from 85.00 to 82.86 q-o-q).
HQs in Hong Kong (SAR), China; Poland and France witnessed the greatest growth in KPMG FPI. HQs in Canada and Pakistan saw the greatest decline, falling from 56.85 to 51.43 and 86.47 to 79.24 respectively.
Top performing sectors were Chemicals and Transportation & Logistics. Sectors like Utilities and Life Sciences Tools & Services showed recovery in 4Q22.
There was an increase in ‘zombies’ in 4Q22, from 785 to 937, representing around 2.77 percent of companies in the study.
Corporate financial performance improved slightly in the first quarter of 2023, with the KPMG FPI rising from 89.68 in 4Q22 to 90.29 in 1Q23 globally.
Asia emerged as the best-performing region with a KPMG FPI score of 92.33, followed by South America at 91.49. The largest drop was experienced by Oceania where KPMG FPI fell from 78.49 to 75.04 q-o-q.
Companies headquartered in Canada and Vietnam enjoyed the greatest growth in KPMG FPI. Those with headquarters in Turkey and Australia saw the biggest decline, falling from 97.11 to 92.44 and 77.78 to 74.08 respectively.
Chemicals and Manufacturing emerged as the top performing sectors, while Raw Materials & Natural Resources, Healthcare, and Technology & Telecommunications showed signs of recovery in 1Q23.
There was an increase in ‘zombies’ in 1Q23, from 937 to 1001, representing around 3.04 percent of companies in the study.
Sector performance
Chemicals and Manufacturing were the top performing sectors in the quarter, driven by strong performance in certain subsectors including Specialty Chemicals, Diversified Chemicals, Industrial Manufacturing, and Electrical Equipment.
Raw Materials & Natural Resources and Healthcare experienced strong recovery in 1Q23, rising by 3.54 percent and 1.02 percent (quarter-over-quarter) respectively.
Over the past year, Travel & Hospitality witnessed the strongest growth of any sector, driven primarily by solid performances in the Casinos & Gaming and Hotels & Lodging subsectors. During the same period, Raw Materials & Natural Resources experienced the greatest decline, falling by 4.81 percent year-over-year in 1Q23.
Sector performance across regions
1Q23 saw globally distressed sectors Raw Materials & Natural Resources and Biotechnology suffer their worst performance in North America (82.39) and Oceania (75.91) respectively.
Overall, Oceania witnessed the most distress, with 15 (out of 21) sectors reporting a KPMG FPI below 90. This was due to declining performance in Life Sciences Tools & Services (65.22), Biotechnology (75.91), Food & Beverage (80.12), and Aerospace & Defense (86.82).
There was better news for Chemicals and Manufacturing, driven by strong performance in Africa (98.97) and Asia (96.01) respectively.
Zombies
Zombies are companies close to default (scoring 0 on the KPMG FPI) for three or more consecutive quarters.
The number of zombies increased by 6.83 percent this quarter (from 937 in 4Q22 to 1001 in 1Q23). Year-over-year, the zombies have been multiplying – more than doubling from the 468 recorded in 1Q22. Many of these companies may already be experiencing distress or working through restructuring strategies.
In 1Q23, sectors with the highest proportion of zombies included Biotechnology (with 12.9 percent zombies), Pharmaceuticals (9 percent), Healthcare (6.85 percent), and Raw Material & Natural Resources (6.14 percent). Technology & Telecommunication, Business Services, and Infrastructure & Real Estate saw significant quarter-over-quarter increases in the number of zombies in the quarter.
What is the KPMG FPI?
The 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
North America witnessed strong growth, rising by 2.41 basis points, driven by an upsurge in the performance of Canadian-headquartered companies (from 51.43 to 68.15 quarter-over-quarter). However, companies headquartered in North America also accounted for about 60 percent of the total number of distressed companies2 in 1Q23.
Oceania and Africa experienced the largest dips, falling by 3.45 basis points and 0.92 basis points respectively – largely influenced by the declining performance of companies headquartered in Australia and Egypt.
Country and territory performance
An analysis of the KPMG FPI country data indicates that, over the year ending 1Q23, companies headquartered in Poland, China, Italy, and Japan experienced the largest gains in KPMG FPI, rising by 9.72 percent, 3.70 percent, 3.02 percent, and 2.73 percent respectively.
Those headquartered in Canada and Australia saw a decline in average KPMG FPI scores over the year, falling by 12.50 percent and 9.93 percent respectively. Interestingly, while Canada returned strong performance in the quarter, year-over-year performance remains low.
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 companies1 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 1Q23, the KPMG FPI identified 1,947 companies (of the 31,995 analyzed) with a KPMG FPI score of zero. Low-ranking companies were most common in USA (650), Canada (481), Australia (215) and Sweden (128).
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.
Get in touch
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.