One question I have encountered time and again since The Edge Malaysia 

Centurion Club Corporate Awards were launched in 2019 is “What is Centurion?”, or a variation of it, “Why Centurion?”

A centurion was an officer in the ancient Roman army who commanded a unit of 100 soldiers that was called a century. Known as the backbone of the Roman army, they were highly skilled warriors who were instrumental in the army’s success in conquering and maintaining a vast empire. Centurions were renowned for their leadership skills, tactical prowess and resilience as they endured harsh conditions and intense combat. They were essentially the ones who held the Roman army’s front line together.

The mental fortitude and characteristics of a centurion remind us of public-listed companies that may be smaller in size than the mega caps, but are critical engines of the country’s growth. The ones that have to fight harder and fiercer to keep their ground, hone their resilience and forge a sustainable future for their businesses. Yet their triumphs in the most challenging battles are often overlooked due to their smaller size or niche, or to being overshadowed by bigger corporations.

Hence, when The Edge Media Group chairman Tan Sri Tong Kooi Ong decided to come up with a second series of awards under The Edge Malaysia’s banner that recognises the most outstanding of such companies among Corporate Malaysia, he chose to name it Centurion.

While its sister awards The Edge Malaysia Billion Ringgit Club Awards honour outstanding performers listed on Bursa Malaysia with a market capitalisation of RM1 billion and above, the Centurion Club Corporate Awards celebrate the achievements of those with a market cap of at least RM100 million but below RM1 billion.

 No registration or nomination is required, as winners are selected from Centurion Club members based on the computation of published, transparent and measurable metrics of profit after tax (PAT), return on equity (ROE) and returns to shareholders. In short, the awards are purely merit-based.

This year marks the fourth edition of the Centurion Club awards. It would have been our sixth year if not for the two-year hiatus we took in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A record high of 514 companies that qualified as members of the Centurion Club based on their market cap were assessed for the awards this time around. Collectively, these companies had a market cap of RM179.3 billion by the March 31 cut-off date this year, up from the RM158.14 billion commanded by the 483 Centurion Club members last year.

Apart from the emergence of Harbour-Link Group Bhd as the Centurion Of The Year (COY), what made this year more memorable was that there were three hat-trick winners — Kotra Industries Bhd, Deleum Bhd and REDTone Digital Bhd. They each took home the awards for highest PAT growth, highest ROE and highest returns to shareholders in their respective sectors. In fact, Kotra, which was the 2023 COY, has been a hat-trick winner every year since our inaugural edition in 2019.

Collectively, this year’s Centurion Club members made a net profit of about RM2.97 billion for the financial year 2023 (FY2023), as opposed to the estimated net loss of about RM1.68 billion that the 483 members incurred in FY2022 (excluding the performance of AirAsia X Bhd, which in FY2021 provided tens of billions of provisions that it then reversed in FY2022 after its debt restructuring) — indicating clear earnings recovery across sectors.

At the awards dinner on July 22, guests told us we were doing a “wonderful thing for Corporate Malaysia”. Joyous winners were appreciative of the “grand event” we hosted for them and thanked us repeatedly for the unexpected recognition.

But truly, the ones who were really remarkable were none other than the winners themselves, who did all the hard work and outdid their peers. And quite a number of them did it not just once, as 15 out of the 27 winning companies that night had won a Centurion Club award before — a testament to their sustained resilience and business prowess.

To all the winners, our heartiest congratulations once more.

May we meet again next year.

Tan Choe Choe
Project editor