TIME in partnership with data firm Statista launched the inaugural edition ranking of the “World’s Growth Leaders 2026” to identify the top performing publicly listed companies around the world.
Methodology
The analysis is based on three primary dimensions:
• Growth Performance
• Financial Stability
• Stock Performance
The first dimension, Growth Performance, was assessed using data from Statista’s revenue database, which contains company growth data for the last five years. To be considered for the evaluation the companies had to be publicly traded and demonstrate strong revenue growth in the last five years. Relative growth and the number of years in which growth was achieved, were considered in the evaluation.
The second dimension, Financial Stability, was investigated by analyzing the companies’ profitability as well as using classic metrics such as the Piotroski F-Score and Altman Z-Score, which refer to a company’s overall financial health and the probability to file for bankruptcy. Industry-specific KPIs were utilized to determine financial stability of companies within the banking, insurance and REIT sector.
The third dimension, Stock Performance, was evaluated based on multiple KPIs, that underline the companies’ strengths as a stock investment. The analysis focused on the average annual growth rate, recent returns, a comparison to the overall market and the stocks’ volatility for the past 5 years.
Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring model. The scores of all three dimensions were added on an equal percentage basis to form the final ranking score of a maximum of 100 points. The 1,000 companies with the highest score were awarded as “World’s Growth Leaders 2026” by TIME and Statista.
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