Chart of the Day: Consumer players bogged down by ridiculously high staff costs

One company's staff costs eat up 28% of its revenue.

Listed consumer companies in Singapore are bedevilled by excessively high staff costs. This chart from Maybank Kim Eng shows that salaries eat up a huge chunk of listed firms' revenues.

For Soup Restaurant, for instance, staff costs run as high as 36.8% of its revenue. This figure stands at 34.3% for Select Group and 31.2% for Tung Lok, followed by 29.8% for Neo Group and 28.3% for Jumbo Group.

Staff costs eat up 26.9% of BreadTalk's revenue. For Sheng Siong and Courts, staff costs take up 12.1% and 9.5% of revenue, respectively.

"The pain of high business costs is more acute for companies not faring that well in revenue terms, such as Tung Lok Group and Soup Restaurant. Unlike Sheng Siong, there is no relief, as both wages and rentals are equally high," said the report.