As you may already know, Hartalega Holdings Berhad is the largest nitrile glove manufacturer in the world. It has an annual installed capacity of 36 billion gloves and can produce up to 45,000 nitrile gloves per hour per production line. As a first mover, Hartalega also spurred the shift in demand from natural rubber to nitrile gloves in the industry.

Here are 12 things I learned from the 2019 Hartalega AGM:

1. Revenue grew 16.6% year-on-year to RM2.8 billion in 2019. The increase in revenue was due to the growing demand for nitrile gloves worldwide particularly in the U.S. and Europe. Glove sales increased by 10.5% y-o-y to 27.2 billion pieces in 2019. In 2019, the North America market contributed 54.1% of revenue, followed by Europe (25.3%), Asia Pacific (18.1%), and South America (2.5%).

2. Net profit increased by just 3.5% y-o-y to RM454.9 million in 2019. The lower