Glove Stocks After COVID: Who's Really Back?

A glove maker that earned like Maybank

In 2021, Top Glove made almost as much as Malaysia's biggest bank.

Out of every RM100 of gloves Top Glove sold that year, RM47 was profit (its net margin). The year before COVID, it was RM7.6. Same gloves, about 6 times the profit.

For every RM100 shareholders had in the company, it earned RM108 in one year (ROE). The money paid itself back in a year.

Four years on, the 4 big glove makers score from 29 to 76. Which of them really earns like before?

Two years later, a loss

Top Glove went from RM7.87b profit to a RM878.6m loss.

When COVID eased, hospitals and clinics were sitting on stock they had bought in the rush. Orders and prices fell together. Top Glove's FY2023 revenue was about 1/7 of FY2021.

Sales fell, but factories, workers and electricity bills didn't shrink with them. That year it lost RM878.6m.

Demand came back. Profit didn't.

The world now uses more gloves than before COVID.

Glove use peaked at 492 billion pieces in 2021, dropped to 307 billion in 2023, and is forecast at about 421 billion in 2025. That's above 2019.

So did profit come back too? Top Glove's profit for the last 12 months is RM185.2m. In 2021 it was RM7.87b. Today it makes about 2% of that.

Why profit hasn't come back

More factories now chase the same orders.

With more factories chasing the same orders, prices find it hard to go back to where they were.

The US tariff on China helps Malaysian makers. How much of that turns into profit, the companies haven't broken out.

The market-share figures come from two different reports and may be counted differently. The US share is a company chairman's figure, not official statistics.

Compare with 2019, not 2021

Only Kossan is back to its pre-COVID margin.

Against 2021, all four look terrible, and you can't tell them apart. Think of a Ramadan bazaar stall that sells 500 bowls a day for one month. You wouldn't call that normal business. To see if the stall has recovered, compare it with the month before the bazaar.

Dashed line: each company's own pre-COVID net margin. Hartalega's year ends in March, so its pre-COVID year is the one to March 2020. Supermax's (year to June 2019) is from its results release.

Kossan (76): 10.1% before COVID, 9.9% now. Profit grew about 14 times from FY2023 to the last 12 months, which sounds like growth, but it's mostly a return to normal. Part of its score is price: a P/B of 0.78, so the shares cost less than the company's own net assets.

Top Glove (58): 7.6% before, 4.8% now, not back yet. Its P/E is 24.0: you pay about 24 years of today's profit for the shares.

Hartalega (68): 14.8% to 7.3%, 49% of its pre-COVID level. The COVID years left it with a lot of shareholders' money, so profit spread over it is thin: an ROE of 3.63%.

The good news: both kept much of the COVID cash, about RM1.13b and RM0.96b, with almost no debt (RM10.5m and RM38.8m).

Supermax: the top earner is now last

Peak margin 53.3% in 2021, score 29 today.

It still loses money: out of every RM100 of sales, it lost about RM21 in FY2026. Three reasons:

1. US ban. US Customs blocked its gloves from Oct 2021 to Sep 2023, nearly two years out of its biggest market.
2. Low prices. Glove prices were weak, one quarter had its lowest sales in years, and forex losses added to it.
3. One-offs. Closing old plants, write-downs and slow-moving stock. Without them, the core loss was about RM34 million (Kenanga).

The latest quarter (Apr–Jun 2026) showed a RM80.3 million profit. But RM44.6 million of it was a tax writeback, not glove sales, and the rest came from a short price spike tied to the Middle East conflict. Glove prices peaked in May at about US$28 per 1,000 and were back to US$18–20 by August.

Where did the cash go? It fell from RM2.15b to RM0.61b in 3 years. Over the same years, free cash flow added up to -RM1.46b, and most of it was not lost: RM1.23b went into factories and machines, against RM0.23b used up by day-to-day business. Its new US plant in Texas was finished in June 2026.

It has very little debt (RM214.6m, debt-to-equity 0.06). It is using its COVID savings to build plants and carry the losses.

29 doesn't mean the company is bad, and it isn't a call to sell. The score sees a business still losing money with cash going down. Whether the new plants earn it back is still to be seen.

What to check in the next results

Don't treat an abnormal year as normal.

The next quarterly results come out over the next month or two (Top Glove's a bit later, as its quarter ends in November). Three things worth checking:

These scores follow my rules. If you weigh cash flow over price, set your own weights and see how the four move.

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