Thai Industry Codes Where Large Companies Still Lose Money 2026
In short
Non-life insurance, TSIC 65120, has 49 large companies among its 446 firms, a 10.99 percent large-company share, nearly sixteen times the national average of 0.7 percent. The code still runs a negative 17.13 percent net margin as of 17 Jul 2026. The pattern repeats elsewhere. Bus transport, TSIC 49201, posts a negative 82.41 percent margin. Cable and pay-TV distribution, TSIC 61102, posts a negative 52.35 percent margin. A heavy civil-engineering code, TSIC 42909, posts a negative 32.29 percent margin. Corporate scale does not guarantee a profit.
Which Thai industry codes have real corporate scale and still lose money?
Non-life insurance answers first. TSIC 65120 counts 49 large companies among its 446 registered firms. That is a 10.99 percent large-company share. It runs nearly sixteen times the 0.7 percent large-company share across the whole economy (DBD, 2026). That concentration sits inside financial and insurance, Thailand's most profitable broad section, which nets a 25.40 percent margin overall. Non-life insurance on its own runs a negative 17.13 percent net margin. That is a 42.53 percentage point gap from its own section. The pattern does not stop at insurance. Bus and urban passenger transport, TSIC 49201, holds only two large filers among 203 companies. It still posts a negative 82.41 percent net margin, the deepest loss in this set, led by Thai Smile Bus. Cable and pay-TV distribution, TSIC 61102, carries three large filers among 539 companies, led by True Visions Group. Its net margin runs negative 52.35 percent. A heavy civil-engineering code, TSIC 42909, holds 14 large filers among 2,377 companies. Its net margin runs negative 32.29 percent. Every one of these codes sits inside a broader section that turns a profit overall. Each code on its own does not.
Net margin in codes with real large-company presence
- Bus transport, TSIC 49201-82
- Cable and pay-TV, TSIC 61102-52
- Heavy civil engineering, TSIC 42909-32
- Non-life insurance, TSIC 65120-17
- National aggregate, all companies4
Figures in percent net margin.
All four codes count multiple large filers. All four run deep in negative territory while the whole economy nets a positive margin.
Four codes, real scale, negative margins
| TSIC code | Category | Companies | Large companies | Large share | Net margin | Section margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 65120 | Non-life insurance | 446 | 49 | 10.99% | -17.13% | 25.40% |
| 49201 | Bus and urban passenger transport | 203 | 2 | 0.99% | -82.41% | 6.27% |
| 61102 | Cable and pay-TV distribution | 539 | 3 | 0.56% | -52.35% | 5.81% |
| 42909 | Heavy civil engineering, not elsewhere classified | 2,377 | 14 | 0.59% | -32.29% | 2.31% |
Company counts, large-company share and net margin by 5-digit TSIC code, as of 17 Jul 2026, compared against the parent section's overall margin.
Why this matters for anyone reading a company count as a health check
A large company count is often read as a proxy for industry health. This data says that shortcut breaks down at the code level. Non-life insurers have absorbed heavy claims years from floods and other catastrophe events, and premiums have not fully caught up with claims cost (Milliman, 2025). Urban bus operators compete against subsidized public routes while carrying the full cost of vehicles, depots and drivers. Cable and pay-TV distributors carry content and infrastructure costs that do not shrink just because subscribers move to streaming. Heavy civil-engineering contractors often win long-duration public contracts where costs run for years before revenue books in full. None of these forces show up in a company count. All four codes carry real large companies, not just small shops. All four still post a negative net margin. A reader who checks only how many big firms sit inside a code, without checking the margin next to it, is reading half the page.
Definitions
- Net margin
- Net profit as a share of revenue. A negative 10 percent margin means the code lost ten satang for every baht of revenue booked.
- Large company
- A company classified in the largest of Thailand's four MSME size bands, micro, small, medium and large, based on the registry's recorded size classification.
- TSIC code
- Thailand's Standard Industrial Classification code. A 5-digit code identifies a specific activity, and each 5-digit code rolls up into one of 21 lettered industry sections.
- Section margin
- The aggregate net margin of every company in the parent one-letter TSIC section, used here as the profitability baseline a specific 5-digit code is compared against.
- Large-company share
- The count of large companies in a code divided by the total company count in that code, expressed as a percentage.
Assumptions
- Only companies that filed a financial statement contribute to net margin, so a code with many dormant registrations may understate the industry's true operating scale.
- 5-digit TSIC category labels used in the prose come from Thailand's published TSIC 2009 classification scheme, not from text stored in the database, since the aggregate table carries no description field for 5-digit codes, and each label was checked against the code's top revenue filer for face validity.
- A code's net margin is an aggregate of all filers, so one very large loss-making company can pull an entire code negative even if smaller filers in the same code are profitable.
- Non-life insurance revenue and claims accounting differs from a typical trading company, so its margin is not directly comparable across sectors.
Methodology
Net margin is aggregate net profit divided by aggregate revenue for all companies in a 5-digit TSIC code that have filed a financial statement, drawn from the DBD registry as of 17 Jul 2026. Company size band, micro, small, medium or large, follows Thailand's standard MSME classification recorded in the registry. The database's aggregate tables store no description text for 5-digit TSIC codes, so the category labels used here come from Thailand's published TSIC 2009 classification scheme and were cross-checked against each code's top revenue filer for face validity. Section-wide margins are drawn from the parent one-letter TSIC section for comparison. Codes were screened to those with at least two large filers so the size-band share is not a single-company artifact.
How we verified this
- 49 large companies over 446 total firms in TSIC 65120 recomputes to 10.99 percent, matching the stated large-company share.
- The national large-company share recomputes to 13,875 over 1,986,709 companies with a size band, or 0.70 percent, making the 10.99 percent share in TSIC 65120 about 15.7 times the national average.
- Financial and insurance's overall net margin of 25.40 percent minus TSIC 65120's negative 17.13 percent net margin recomputes to a 42.53 percentage point gap within the same section.
- Size-band counts sum to entity count in each code checked: 130 plus 68 plus 3 plus 2 equals 203 for TSIC 49201, 436 plus 94 plus 6 plus 3 equals 539 for TSIC 61102, and 1,540 plus 767 plus 56 plus 14 equals 2,377 for TSIC 42909.
- 2 large filers over 203 companies in TSIC 49201 recomputes to 0.99 percent, 3 over 539 in TSIC 61102 recomputes to 0.56 percent, and 14 over 2,377 in TSIC 42909 recomputes to 0.59 percent.
- Section margin minus code margin recomputes to an 88.68 percentage point gap for transportation against TSIC 49201, a 58.16 point gap for information and communication against TSIC 61102, and a 34.60 point gap for construction against TSIC 42909.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons and financial statement aggregates. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- Milliman. (2025). Thailand in focus, non-life March 2025. Milliman General Insurance Newsletter. https://media.milliman.com/v1/media/edge/images/millimaninc5660-milliman6442-prod27d5-0001/media/Milliman/PDFs/2025-Articles/4-3-25_Thailand-General-Insurance-Newsletter.pdf
Frequently asked questions
Which Thai industry code has the highest large-company presence while running a net loss?
Non-life insurance, TSIC 65120. It has 49 large companies among 446 firms, a 10.99 percent share, while the code posts a negative 17.13 percent net margin.
Is bus transport profitable in Thailand?
Not at the TSIC 49201 code level. It posts a negative 82.41 percent net margin, the steepest loss among the codes examined here, even though large filers such as Thai Smile Bus operate inside it.
Does having many large companies mean an industry code is profitable?
No. All four codes in this data carry genuine large companies and each one still posts a negative net margin, while the broader sections they sit inside are profitable overall.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). Thai Industry Codes Where Large Companies Still Lose Money 2026. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/thai-industry-codes-where-big-companies-still-lose-money-2026
Data & corrections
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Written by
Chatpong L.Founder, Max Data, Max Solutions Co., Ltd.
Chatpong L. leads Max Data, a company-intelligence platform built on Thailand's official business registry. He writes about the structure of the Thai economy using primary registry data. His work covers company formation, industry concentration, and regional business activity.
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This page reports company-level and aggregate statistics only. It names no individuals and makes no claims about any person. Figures are provided for information and may be revised as source data updates.