Research into the health of private businesses
The third edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Private Business Barometer has been released to the market. The Barometer has become a regular, authoritative fixture on the calendar of private business owners, senior executives, analysts, media and government policy makers.
To bring the Barometer to the market we collaborate with East & Partners, a leading specialist market research firm. Detailed interviews are conducted with 750 private businesses nationally with an annual turnover of between A$10m – A$100 million.
Key findings from Barometer III
Profits - Businesses are setting more optimistic medium-term (three-year) profit growth targets than in February 2007, but less optimistic short-term (one-year) targets. Both long and short-term average sales and profit growth targets remain high at well over 10%.
Debt - Facing rising debt costs, businesses have reduced their debt ratio (total borrowings against total assets) from 41.3% in February 2007 to 38.8% in February 2008.
Funding - Every respondent nominated funding the business as a key challenge.
Growth - Businesses achieved a 14.4% average increase in sales and 13.1% average rise in profits during the 12 months to February 2008.
Crunched - About half of businesses (51.2%) rated availability of credit as a key impediment to meeting targets in the next year.
Tightening up - Only 34.8% of businesses announced intentions to hire additional employees, down from 46.1% in October 2007.
If you would like to find out more about these issues and their potential impact on your business, please call Gregory Will on 02 8266 3344.
