What are Sri Lanka’s most valuable brands in 2016?

In this fast-changing world, value creation is rapidly changing from the conventional  bricks and mortar to being more reliant on intangibles. This is a paradigm shift in the way business value is now being created.

In this context Brand Finance Lanka has just released its much coveted annual study of Sri Lanka’s most valuable brands and related rankings in the 2016 Brands Annual (a Media Services/LMD publication). 

According to Ruchi Gunewardene, Managing Director of Brand Finance Lanka, this year’s results show that there is an increase in the perceived risk that is facing the economy, which has impacted many of the brand valuations.

Despite the newly-elected Government consolidating its position, the economy is struggling under the weight of significant debt (left by the previous Government), which however is compounded by an unclear strategy to reduce its budget deficit. This is in addition to heightened economic pressures in the rest of the world, such as a slowdown in China, depreciation in the Sri Lankan currency and increased capital outflows as international investors seek to invest their money in less risky assets. 

This has had a negative impact on the brand values because investors perceive there is greater risk associated with expected performance. Therefore future royalty earnings are worth less in present value terms. As a result, total brand value of all the brands has decreased by Rs. 4 billion to Rs. 426 billion and 57 brands have seen a fall in value.

This year, the most valuable Sri Lankan brands include the three big State banks BOC and People’s Bank, which are now joined by NSB having moved up two places from last year. 

Sri Lanka’s only triple A brand, Dialog is at fourth position, and has been in the leadership race for a long time. Its strong brand management always makes it a threat to challenge the leaders on our table.

Whilst branding is well known and accepted in consumer products and service brands, the practice of branding is often not thought to be relevant to corporates and those which are marketing to other businesses – the so called business to business brands.  To highlight the importance of this discipline in them, a ranking of these brands plus multinational corporates as a separate category are included in this year’s results. 

According to Gunewardene: “All of these corporates are competing for a whole host of resources, whether it is talent to run the company, building a reputation with international partners and customers or having a positive image with important stakeholders such as regulators or Governments. Whichever way it is viewed, the reputation of the corporate brand precedes any discussion and managing it skilfully is key for sustained success.”

Brand Finance is an independent consultancy focused on the strategy, management and valuation of brands and branded businesses. Since 1996, Brand Finance has performed hundreds of brand valuations with an aggregate value of over $150 billion. The valuations have been in support of a variety of business needs, including:

Valuations as part of a mandate to deliver value-based marketing strategy and tracking, thereby bridging the gap between marketing and finance. 

Technical valuations for accounting, IPOs, tax, legal purposes and for commercial transactions. 

Headquarter in UK, Brand Finance has a global network across 17 countries, including USA, India, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Netherlands, Singapore and Sri Lanka. 

The Brands Annual which is now in its eighth consecutive year, is published by LMD/Media Services, Sri Lanka’s premier magazine publisher.