The Wall Street Journal reported recently on results in for the latest Deloitte “CFO Signals” survey of CFOs of large North American companies. Even though the survey focused on large companies throughout North America, the results are still interesting for local small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) here in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley.
While the key takeaway is that CFOs are concentrating their efforts on growth, the emphasis on cutting costs is rising. The annual growth expectations for revenues and sales rose to 4.4%.
“Based on CFOs’ responses, the Financial Services, Healthcare/Pharma, Technology, and Services sectors are the most growth oriented, with all above 60%, while the Energy/Resources sector is the most oriented toward cost reduction at 57%.”
“Industry expectations for year-over-year revenue growth vary considerably, with CFOs from the Retail/Wholesale, Financial Services, Healthcare/Pharma and T/M/E sectors expressing the strongest expectations, with all at or above 6.8%*. CFOs within the Manufacturing sector expect only 2.5%* growth, and Energy/Resources trails the pack at just -3.5%*, down from -2.5%* in the 2Q survey.”
Another key finding of the CFO survey is that companies prefer organic growth over inorganic growth.