8 Thai Industry Sections With No Loss Year Since 2007 (2026)
In short
Eight of Thailand's 18 fully tracked industry sections have never posted an aggregate net loss in any statement year from 2007 through 2025, as of 14 August 2026. Financial and insurance, wholesale and retail trade, and information and communication anchor the group, alongside electricity and gas, water and waste, professional and scientific services, education, and human health. Together these eight sections earned 53.4 percent of all cumulative sector profit booked since 2007. Arts and entertainment lost money in 13 of those 19 years, and accommodation and food service lost money in 12.
Which Thai industry sections have never posted a loss?
Eight of Thailand's 18 fully tracked industry sections never posted an aggregate net loss in any statement year from 2007 through 2025, as of 14 August 2026 (DBD, 2026). Financial and insurance leads the group with a 25.4 percent net margin, wholesale and retail trade and information and communication sit alongside it, and electricity and gas, water and waste, professional and scientific services, education, and human health and social work round out the list. Each of these eight sections cleared a positive aggregate net profit in every one of the 19 measurable years since 2007. Ten of the remaining tracked sections posted a loss in at least one of those years. Two sections, arts and entertainment and accommodation and food service, posted a loss in more than half of them, at 13 and 12 loss years respectively.
Loss years out of 19, by industry section, 2007 to 2025
- Financial and insurance0
- Wholesale and retail trade0
- Professional, scientific and technical0
- Electricity and gas0
- Information and communication0
- Human health and social work0
- Water and waste0
- Education0
- Manufacturing1
- Real estate1
- Mining and quarrying1
- Transportation and storage1
- Construction1
- Administrative and support1
- Agriculture, forestry and fishing6
- Other service activities11
- Accommodation and food service12
- Arts and entertainment13
Figures in loss years out of 19 tracked.
Eight sections sit flat at zero. Arts and entertainment and accommodation and food service carry the longest loss streaks of any fully tracked section.
Loss years by industry section, 2007 to 2025
| Industry section | Loss years of 19 | Share of years lost | Cumulative net profit 2007-2025, billion baht |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial and insurance | 0 | 0.0% | 9,658 |
| Wholesale and retail trade | 0 | 0.0% | 5,741 |
| Professional, scientific and technical | 0 | 0.0% | 1,923 |
| Electricity and gas | 0 | 0.0% | 1,288 |
| Information and communication | 0 | 0.0% | 999 |
| Human health and social work | 0 | 0.0% | 561 |
| Water and waste | 0 | 0.0% | 137 |
| Education | 0 | 0.0% | 45 |
| Manufacturing | 1 | 5.3% | 13,382 |
| Real estate | 1 | 5.3% | 1,539 |
| Mining and quarrying | 1 | 5.3% | 1,023 |
| Transportation and storage | 1 | 5.3% | 857 |
| Construction | 1 | 5.3% | 553 |
| Administrative and support | 1 | 5.3% | 508 |
| Agriculture, forestry and fishing | 6 | 31.6% | 43 |
| Other service activities | 11 | 57.9% | 1 |
| Accommodation and food service | 12 | 63.2% | -89 |
| Arts and entertainment | 13 | 68.4% | -22 |
Aggregate net profit summed across every 5-digit TSIC code in a section, checked against zero for each of the 19 statement years 2007 to 2025, data as of 14 Aug 2026.
The same eight sections never blinked, even in crisis years
Financial and insurance's thinnest year on record was 2008, the year the global financial crisis hit, and the section still cleared 192.72 billion baht in aggregate net profit. Electricity and gas posted its weakest year in 2011, the year of Thailand's major floods, yet still earned 26.80 billion baht. Water and waste, information and communication, and education all recorded their smallest annual profit in 2007, the first year of the panel, and every year since has come in larger than that opening year. Wholesale and retail trade's own floor was 2007 too, at 108.10 billion baht, before climbing to a peak of 449.69 billion baht in 2023. None of the eight sections needed a single year of the past two decades to bail them out. They simply never went negative in the first place.
Why this matters
A lender or an investor sizing up counterparty risk in Thailand often asks which sectors are cyclical and which are not, and this list answers that question with two decades of evidence rather than a guess. Financial and insurance, wholesale and retail, and information and communication carry the country's business, so a slowdown there shows up as thinner margins long before it shows up as red ink. Arts and entertainment and accommodation and food service sit at the other extreme, exposed directly to discretionary spending and, in the case of hospitality, to a near total shutdown during the 2020 and 2021 pandemic years. Company size, not sector alone, still shapes an individual firm's odds. Manufacturing and real estate both carry a healthy net margin as of 14 August 2026, yet each still posted one loss year in the 19-year panel, a reminder that a sector-wide average can mask a genuinely bad year underneath it.
Definitions
- Aggregate net loss year
- A statement year in which the summed net profit across every company in an industry section is negative, even if some individual companies in that section were profitable.
- Statement year
- The fiscal year a company's filed financial statement covers. The source registry records it in the Buddhist calendar, and this analysis converts it to the common era by subtracting 543.
- Fully tracked section
- An industry section with a complete 19-year panel of statement-year data from 2007 through 2025 in the source registry, allowing a fair loss-year count against every other fully tracked section.
- Net margin
- Aggregate net profit as a share of aggregate revenue for a section. A margin of ten percent means ten satang of profit for every baht of revenue.
- Section
- One of the lettered top-level TSIC industry classifications used by Thailand's business registry, such as financial and insurance or wholesale and retail trade.
Assumptions
- Loss year counts are drawn from company-level filed statements summed first to the 5-digit TSIC code and then to the section, so a section can post an aggregate profit in a year even when many of its individual companies lost money.
- The households sector, code T, and public administration and extraterritorial organizations, codes O and U, are excluded from the 18-section ranking because their statement-year panels are incomplete or absent in the source table.
- Figures reflect the Max Data registry snapshot computed 14 August 2026, and DBD's underlying filings can be revised or backfilled in later registry updates.
- A section can still contain loss-making individual companies in every tracked year even while its aggregate sum stays positive throughout.
Methodology
Loss years are counted by summing total_net_profit across every 5-digit TSIC industry code within a section for each statement year, using DBD-filed financial statement aggregates in the Max Data registry as of 14 August 2026. A statement year counts as a loss year when that section-wide sum is negative. The panel covers Buddhist calendar statement years 2550 through 2568, equal to calendar years 2007 through 2025, and the incomplete 2569 statement year, which equals 2026, is excluded throughout. The households sector, code T, has aggregate data for only 3 of the 19 years and is excluded from the 18-section ranking as not fully measurable. Public administration and extraterritorial organizations, codes O and U, have no statement-year history in this table and are excluded for the same reason. Figures are aggregate sums across all companies in a section, not an average of individual company results.
How we verified this
- Loss years were tallied section by section by summing market_tsic_year_insight total_net_profit within each section_code for all 19 statement years 2550 to 2568, equal to 2007 to 2025, and 8 of the 18 fully tracked sections returned zero years with a negative sum.
- Share of tracked sections with zero loss years recomputed as 8 divided by 18 equals 44.4 percent.
- Company count inside the eight loss-free sections summed to 986,884, the total of 7,833 plus 4,818 plus 715,976 plus 52,537 plus 35,567 plus 138,962 plus 13,897 plus 17,294, which divided by the 1,986,489 companies with a classified section equals 49.7 percent.
- Cumulative net profit for the eight loss-free sections summed to 20,351,266,252,452.25 baht, and cumulative net profit for all 18 tracked sections summed to 38,145,473,840,347.76 baht, giving the loss-free group a profit share of 53.4 percent.
- Arts and entertainment's 13 loss years divided by 19 equals 68.4 percent, and accommodation and food service's 12 loss years divided by 19 equals 63.2 percent, each confirmed against the year-by-year sign of that section's summed profit.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons and financial statement aggregates. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- Bank of Thailand. (2026). Annual report: Financial institutions and payment systems. https://www.bot.or.th/en/research-and-publications/reports/annual-report.html
Frequently asked questions
Which Thai industry sections have never posted an aggregate net loss since 2007?
Eight sections: financial and insurance, wholesale and retail trade, information and communication, electricity and gas, water and waste, professional and scientific and technical services, education, and human health and social work. Each stayed aggregate net-profit positive in every one of the 19 measurable statement years from 2007 through 2025.
Which Thai industry sections lose money most often?
Arts and entertainment posted a loss in 13 of the 19 measurable years, and accommodation and food service posted a loss in 12, the two worst records of any fully tracked section.
Does a positive net margin today mean a section never had a loss year?
No. Manufacturing and real estate both carry a positive net margin as of 14 August 2026, but each still posted one loss year somewhere in the 19-year panel, so today's average does not guarantee a clean history.
Why are households, public administration, and extraterritorial organizations left out of the ranking?
The households section has aggregate data for only 3 of the 19 tracked years, and public administration and extraterritorial organizations have no statement-year history in this table at all, so none of the three can be judged against a full 19-year panel.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). 8 Thai Industry Sections With No Loss Year Since 2007 (2026). Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/thai-industry-sections-with-no-loss-year-since-2007-2026
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.