A recovery and returns analysis of 987 listed companies — the only ranking that combines 5-year returns, recovery rates, and current valuation into a single forward-looking score.
In our first Bursa Malaysia study, we found that two out of three listed companies lost more than half their value at some point in the past 5 years. That answered one question — which sectors were the most painful to hold — but it left a bigger question unanswered.
A maximum drawdown measures the worst moment. It doesn't tell you whether the stock recovered, whether it made money on a hold-to-today basis, or whether it's cheap now. A stock that fell 70% and then tripled is in the same drawdown bucket as one that fell 70% and stayed there. For an investor, those are completely different outcomes.
This analysis adds the three measures that drawdowns can't answer. Did the sector actually make money? That's the 5-year total return. Did it recover from the damage? That's the recovery rate. Is it cheap or expensive now? That's the current P/E. Put together, these are the inputs that actually determine whether a sector is worth owning going forward.
The honest scoreboard. Did an investor who bought in April 2021 and held until today make money or lose it? This strips away everything except outcome.
How far has each stock climbed from its trough back toward its prior peak? 0% means still at the bottom. 100% means fully recovered. This separates temporary panics from permanent impairments.
Trailing P/E ratio. A sector that got crushed might now be cheap — which changes the forward math entirely. The best investments are beaten-up sectors priced below their real earnings power.
The best sectors to invest in aren't the ones that avoided pain — they're the ones that combine proven returns, recovering prices, and reasonable valuations. Most analysis only looks at one of the three.
The return ranking completely reshuffles the drawdown ranking. The sectors that avoided pain are mostly the ones that made money — but not in the order you'd expect.
% +ve = percentage of companies with positive 5-year return. n = companies in sector.
Utilities blew everyone away. Median return of +77.5% over 5 years, with 75% of companies in the green. This is the YTL Power story — up 519% on the back of data centre demand and the Kulim solar push. YTL Corporation rode the same wave at +218%. Gas Malaysia, PBA Holdings, Ranhill all tripled or more. The catch: median P/E is now 17.2x, the second most expensive sector on the board.
Financial Services was the steady compounder. Median return +25.4%, two-thirds of companies positive. CIMB +136%, AMMB +138%, RCE Capital +134%. These aren't explosive gains — they're the "buy a well-run Malaysian bank, collect the dividend, let NIM expansion do the work" outcome. Crucially, the sector is still cheap at 10.6x median P/E.
Real Estate is a tale of two distributions. The median return is +13.3%, but the mean is +105.5%. That divergence is driven by a handful of thinly-traded property outliers whose extreme percentage gains reflect low-base, low-liquidity distortions more than replicable investor returns — they should be discounted. Once you set those aside, the sector still holds up: 56% of companies positive on a 5-year basis, a +13.3% typical return, and the cheapest median P/E on the exchange. The breadth is real even when the outliers are stripped out.
Everything below Energy is underwater. Industrials, Consumer Cyclical, Comms Services, Basic Materials, Technology, Healthcare — all have negative median 5-year returns. The majority of companies in these sectors are worth less today than they were in 2021. Only 15% of tech stocks are positive. Only 24% of healthcare stocks. The drawdown analysis showed where the pain was. The return analysis confirms the pain was permanent.
The recovery rate measures how far each stock has climbed from its trough back toward its peak. The numbers are devastating — no sector on Bursa has a median recovery rate above 50%.
Full = percentage of companies fully recovered to or above prior peak. 0% = still at trough.
No sector has a median recovery rate above 50%. Not one. The "best" is Utilities at 45% — meaning the typical utility stock has recovered less than half of what it lost. Financial Services has a median recovery of only 16%. The typical financial stock is still sitting 84% of the way between its trough and its peak.
The "fully recovered" column is near-zero across the board. The highest is Energy at 3.7% — meaning 96% of energy stocks have not recovered to their prior peak. Technology: 0.8%. Healthcare: 0.0%. Financial Services: 0.0%. Utilities: 0.0%. The positive returns you saw in the previous section are happening because those stocks were cheap in April 2021, not because they've reached new highs.
Technology and Healthcare are essentially dead. Recovery rates of 4% and 5% respectively. The typical tech stock has recovered 4% of the distance from trough to peak. This isn't a drawdown anymore — it's a permanent repricing.
Bursa Malaysia is not a market in recovery. It's a market where a small number of stocks have done well while the vast majority remain underwater. The KLCI masks this because it holds the winners.
Cheap sectors with improving fundamentals are where forward returns come from. The valuation table reveals a sharp divide between value sectors and expensive survivors.
<15x = percentage of companies trading below 15x P/E. Excludes negative and extreme (>200x) P/Es.
Energy, Real Estate, and Financial Services are the three cheapest sectors on Bursa Malaysia — all around 10x median P/E with 60-73% of companies trading below 15x. These are textbook "value" territory for an emerging market exchange.
Utilities has fully re-rated. At 17.2x it's the second most expensive sector, and only 36% of utility stocks trade below 15x. The YTL-led data centre rally has already priced in. This is a sector that made great money for people who bought 3 years ago, but buying now means paying up.
Healthcare at 19.6x is the most expensive sector on the exchange — remarkable for a sector where the median stock is down 56% over 5 years. The explanation: the surviving healthcare companies (KPJ, IHH, the hospitals) are fairly valued while the dead ones (glove makers) are trading at near-zero earnings. The P/E looks high because the "E" collapsed, not because the "P" is elevated.
Each sector's rank across all three dimensions — return, recovery, and valuation — combined into a single score. Lowest score wins. The top 5 sit where proven returns, some recovery, and reasonable valuation all overlap.
Cheap across the board, positive median return, and 56% of companies are in the green. The sector mean is inflated by a handful of thinly-traded outliers and should be ignored — the median tells the real story: a +13.3% typical return at just 10.2x earnings. Bursa Malaysia's largest cheap sector with proven positive breadth.
The only sector that is both cheap AND proven. +25% returns, two-thirds of companies positive, still trading at 10.6x. Every other sector is either cheap and unproven (Energy) or proven and expensive (Utilities). Financials sit in the overlap.
The cheapest sector on the exchange at 10.1x. Median return exactly zero, 48% of companies positive — a mathematical coin flip. But it's a cheap coin flip. If you have a directional view on oil or the O&G cycle, this is the lowest-cost way to bet on it.
The "didn't lose" sector. Modest positive returns, cheap at 10.9x, 67% of companies below 15x. This is your Nestle, F&N, Spritzer, plantations. Nobody got rich, nobody got destroyed. Capital preservation with slight upside — the most boring and most reliable pick.
Best raw returns on the exchange and highest recovery rate. But at 17.2x P/E the market has fully re-rated this sector on the data centre story. The data says this was the best sector to own — past tense. Buying now is paying for yesterday's gains unless the AI/data centre thesis has another leg.
Seven visualisations that compress the entire 987-company dataset into a single view. Where the bargains are, where the wipeouts cluster, how the whole distribution is shaped, and what the winners and losers look like next to each other.
The scatter below plots every sector on two axes: 5-year return (vertical) and current P/E (horizontal). Dot size reflects the number of companies in each sector. The top-left quadrant — cheap and profitable — is where forward returns come from. The bottom-right — expensive and losing money — is where value traps live.
Did the pain pay off? Each sector plotted by the worst drawdown it endured (horizontal) against the return it delivered (vertical). Sectors in the top-left hurt badly but made money. Sectors in the bottom-left hurt badly and lost money — those are the true value destroyers.
Every sector on every metric at once. Each cell is colour-coded from best (green) to worst (red) within that column. Read across to see a sector's full profile. Read down to see which sectors lead each dimension.
Every single one of the 987 companies as a bar, sorted from worst to best by 5-year return. This is what the whole market actually looks like — not the index, the stocks. The long red left tail is the wreckage. The short green right tail is where the winners are hiding.
The biggest winners next to the biggest losers. Both groups exist on the same exchange, over the same 5 years. The winners list excludes a handful of thinly-traded outliers whose extreme percentage gains reflect low-liquidity distortions more than replicable returns — the names shown are verified mid-and-large-cap stocks with genuine investor returns. The losers list needs no such filter; the −99% wipeouts are everywhere on Bursa.
Bursa Malaysia over the past 5 years was two markets in one. A handful of winners concentrated in Utilities, Financials, and a few plantation and property names. A long tail of losers concentrated in Tech, Healthcare, and small-cap Industrials. The index blended them. The distribution doesn't lie.
Each of these comes from combining all three dimensions — return, recovery, and valuation. No single metric alone reveals them.
Seventy-five percent positive, +77.5% median return, highest recovery rate. But at 17.2x trailing P/E, the market has fully re-rated this sector. Unless there's another leg to the data centre story, the risk-reward has shifted from asymmetric to symmetric. The best money was made 2-3 years ago, not now.
It returned +25% over 5 years, two-thirds of companies made money, and it's still trading at 10.6x. Every other sector is either cheap and unproven (Energy at 10.1x but 0% median return) or proven and expensive (Utilities at +77% but 17.2x P/E). Financials is the only sector sitting in the overlap — and that overlap is where risk-adjusted returns come from.
Exactly 0% median return, exactly 48% positive, exactly 10.1x P/E. The sector is mathematically neutral on a 5-year basis. That means if you have a directional view on oil prices or the offshore O&G capex cycle, you're getting that bet at the cheapest valuation on the exchange. The asymmetry is in your favour if you're right — and the downside is limited by how low the valuation already is.
The drawdown analysis showed the crash. The return analysis shows it was permanent. The recovery analysis shows no bounce. The valuation shows they're not even cheap. −52% median return, 4% recovery, 15.2x P/E for tech. −56% median return, 5% recovery, 19.6x P/E for healthcare. The market is not mispricing these sectors — it's correctly pricing structurally impaired businesses.
The highest "fully recovered" rate across all 11 sectors is 3.7% (Energy). Across the entire 987-stock universe, the percentage of companies that have returned to their 2021-era peaks is in the low single digits. This is not a market in recovery. It's a market where a small number of stocks (YTL Power, CIMB, plantation plays, a few property names) have done well while the broad majority remains underwater. The KLCI looks fine because it holds the winners by weight.