Thailand's ROE Minus ROA Gap: 2007 to 2025
In short
Borrowed money widened the gap between Thailand's return on equity and return on assets to 8.99 percentage points in 2013, the widest reading in nineteen years, as of 7 July 2026. That gap narrowed to just 2.81 points in 2019, the tightest reading in the series. By 2025 it sat at 4.81 points, roughly half the 2013 peak. The average gap across all nineteen years runs 6.32 points. The swing traces how much debt amplified shareholder returns each year since 2007, a pattern the debt load and assets to equity figures on this site do not show on their own.
How much does debt widen Thai companies' returns?
Return on equity and return on assets divide the same profit by two different bases, one against everything a company owns and one against only the portion its owners funded themselves, and the space between the two numbers is what debt buys. That space reached 8.99 percentage points in statement year 2013, the widest of nineteen years in the DBD registry (DBD, 2026). Return on assets stood at 4.37 percent that year. Return on equity ran to 13.36 percent, more than triple. Six years later, in 2019, the same gap had collapsed to 2.81 points. Return on assets that year fell to 1.54 percent. Return on equity fell to 4.34 percent. By 2025 the gap sat at 4.81 points, roughly half its 2013 high. The nineteen year average gap is 6.32 points. Thai companies never stopped borrowing over this period, but how much that borrowing multiplied the return handed to shareholders has swung by more than a factor of three.
ROE minus ROA gap, Thailand, 2007 to 2025
Figures in percentage points, ROE minus ROA.
Statement year 2018 dips to 4.69 points not because companies borrowed less that year but because a wave of new filings pushed reported equity up several times over in a single year, then it reversed. Read 2017 and 2019 as the honest bracket around it.
Return on assets, return on equity and the gap by statement year
| Statement year | Return on assets | Return on equity | Gap, points | Filing companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 3.51% | 11.94% | 8 | 315,278 |
| 2008 | 2.93% | 10.14% | 7 | 324,317 |
| 2009 | 3.45% | 10.96% | 8 | 329,666 |
| 2010 | 4.06% | 12.73% | 9 | 352,153 |
| 2011 | 3.64% | 11.56% | 8 | 376,479 |
| 2012 | 4.19% | 13.17% | 9 | 403,035 |
| 2013 | 4.37% | 13.36% | 9 | 433,201 |
| 2014 | 3.87% | 11.04% | 7 | 457,933 |
| 2015 | 3.40% | 9.72% | 6 | 479,697 |
| 2016 | 3.98% | 10.77% | 7 | 500,613 |
| 2017 | 3.65% | 10.10% | 6 | 531,249 |
| 2018 | 3.26% | 7.95% | 5 | 570,309 |
| 2019 | 1.54% | 4.34% | 3 | 594,825 |
| 2020 | 1.91% | 5.47% | 4 | 617,289 |
| 2021 | 2.92% | 8.46% | 6 | 648,532 |
| 2022 | 3.03% | 8.56% | 6 | 675,248 |
| 2023 | 2.38% | 6.68% | 4 | 704,503 |
| 2024 | 2.69% | 7.14% | 4 | 730,001 |
| 2025 | 2.87% | 7.67% | 5 | 713,946 |
Aggregate ROA and ROE, both sums across every company with a filed financial statement that year, DBD registry as of 7 Jul 2026. Gap is ROE minus ROA in percentage points, computed from unrounded figures before display rounding.
Why 2018 needs an asterisk
Statement year 2561 on the Buddhist calendar, 2018 on the Western calendar, breaks the pattern. Total equity across filing companies stood at 24.04 trillion baht in 2017. It jumped to 101.60 trillion baht in 2018. It fell back to 28.54 trillion baht in 2019. That single year surge pulled return on equity down to 7.95 percent even though net profit kept rising. The surge cut the gap to 4.69 points, an artificially low reading driven by a wave of new filings entering the registry rather than by any real change in how companies financed themselves. Treat the years on either side as the more honest read of where the trend actually stood. The gap ran 6.45 points in 2017. It ran 2.81 points in 2019.
Why the gap matters more than either ratio alone
A widening gap between return on equity and return on assets does not by itself signal a stronger business. It means a given amount of operating profit is being multiplied by more borrowed money sitting on the balance sheet. In 2013 the gap peaked at 8.99 points. Return on assets that year was 4.37 percent, already the highest reading anywhere in the nineteen year series, so debt was amplifying a genuinely strong operating return. In 2019 the gap fell to its narrowest point, 2.81 points. Return on assets that year was 1.54 percent, the lowest reading in the series, so there was barely any operating return left for debt to amplify. The gap is not a fixed multiple of debt. It depends on how much profit debt has to work with in a given year. Two years can carry a similar debt load on the books and still produce very different amplification, because what matters is what debt does to a shrinking or growing profit, not how much debt sits there. Neither the total liabilities figures nor the assets to equity ratio published separately on this site captures that interaction, since both describe the balance sheet on its own, without reference to what profit did that year.
Definitions
- Return on equity, ROE
- Aggregate net profit divided by aggregate shareholder equity for a group of companies in a given statement year, expressed as a percentage.
- Return on assets, ROA
- Aggregate net profit divided by aggregate total assets for a group of companies in a given statement year, expressed as a percentage.
- Percentage point
- The plain arithmetic difference between two percentages, distinct from a percent change. A move from 2 percent to 9 percent is a gain of 7 percentage points, not 7 percent.
- ROE minus ROA gap
- The difference between return on equity and return on assets in percentage points for the same group of companies and year. It widens when more of the balance sheet is financed with debt rather than equity, since debt does not enter the equity base that ROE is divided by.
- Statement year
- The fiscal year a company's financial statement covers, recorded in the DBD registry using the Buddhist calendar and converted here to the Western calendar.
- Aggregate ratio
- A ratio computed from the sum of every company's profit, equity or assets in a given year, not the average of each company's own individual ratio.
Assumptions
- Only companies that filed a financial statement for a given statement year contribute to that year's totals, so the gap reflects the filing population, not every registered company.
- ROE and ROA are aggregate sector wide figures, the sum of net profit divided by the sum of equity or assets, so a small number of very large filers can move the gap in any single year.
- Statement year 2018, BE2561, is treated as a filing coverage anomaly based on the size and reversal of its one year equity swing, not confirmed company by company.
- Statement year 2026, BE2569, is excluded because it holds only a small partial set of early filers and would understate the year if included.
- The gap figures shown are computed from unrounded aggregate ROE and ROA before rounding for display, so subtracting the two rounded percentages shown in the table can differ from the displayed gap by a few hundredths of a point.
Methodology
The gap is computed as aggregate return on equity minus aggregate return on assets for each statement year, both drawn directly from the DBD registry's per year aggregates as of 7 July 2026. ROE and ROA are sector wide sums, aggregate net profit divided by aggregate equity or assets across every company with a filed statement that year, not an average of each company's own ratio. Statement years run on the Buddhist calendar in the source table, so BE2550 covers 2007 and BE2568 covers 2025, and BE2569, 2026, is excluded because it holds only a few thousand early filers and would understate the year. The 2018 reading is flagged as a filing coverage anomaly rather than a real financing shift, based on the size of the one year equity swing relative to the modest change in filing company count.
How we verified this
- 2013 recompute: 2,200,474,314,419.72 baht net profit divided by 16,475,628,396,450.96 baht equity equals 13.36 percent ROE, and the same profit divided by 50,408,590,411,719.99 baht assets equals 4.37 percent ROA, a gap of 8.99 points, confirmed as the maximum gap in the nineteen year table and confirmed that 2013 also holds the maximum ROA and maximum ROE of the series.
- 2019 recompute: 1,239,490,632,218.74 baht net profit divided by 28,538,213,949,269.62 baht equity equals 4.34 percent ROE, and the same profit divided by 80,604,942,523,542.06 baht assets equals 1.54 percent ROA, a gap of 2.81 points, confirmed as the minimum gap, minimum ROA and minimum ROE in the series.
- 2007 to 2025 change: the 2007 gap of 8.4285 points minus the 2025 gap of 4.8092 points equals a decline of 3.62 points, meaning the 2025 figure sits at 57 percent of the 2007 starting level. Measured against the 2013 peak of 8.99 points instead, the 2025 figure sits at 53 percent, roughly half.
- Nineteen year average: summing the 19 yearly gap values from 2007 through 2025 and dividing by 19 equals 6.32 points, matching the average stated in the tldr and key stats.
- National snapshot cross check: 6.11574 percent average ROE minus 2.54898 percent average ROA from the single row market_national_insight table equals 3.567, rounded to 3.57 points, matching the current cross company gap key stat.
- Internal consistency check for 2025: ROE of 7.6749 percent divided by ROA of 2.8657 percent equals 2.678, matching total assets of 102.83 trillion baht divided by total equity of 38.39 trillion baht, also 2.678, confirming ROE, ROA and the balance sheet figures for that year agree with each other.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons and financial statement aggregates. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- OECD. (2025). The corporate sector. In OECD Capital Market Review of Thailand 2025. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-capital-market-review-of-thailand-2025_0a975590-en/full-report/the-corporate-sector_008c96e5.html
Frequently asked questions
What is the gap between Thailand's ROE and ROA in 2025?
4.81 percentage points in statement year 2025, DBD registry data as of 7 July 2026. Return on equity ran to 7.67 percent that year. Return on assets ran to 2.87 percent.
When was the gap between Thai ROE and ROA widest?
Statement year 2013, at 8.99 percentage points, the widest reading across nineteen years of data, and also the single best year for raw return on assets and return on equity.
When was the gap narrowest?
Statement year 2019, at 2.81 percentage points, the narrowest reading in the series, coinciding with the lowest return on assets and return on equity of any year on record.
Why does borrowed money widen ROE more than ROA?
ROA divides profit by everything a company owns, while ROE divides that same profit only by the portion owners funded themselves. The more of the balance sheet financed with debt rather than equity, the further ROE runs ahead of ROA for an identical profit figure.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). Thailand's ROE Minus ROA Gap: 2007 to 2025. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/thailands-roe-roa-leverage-gap-2007-2025
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.