Companies have record profitability
O Estado de S. Paulo - 11/03/2007
In the first half of this year, the Brazilian companies had the best profitability of the decade. A survey by Serasa, based on 9.7 thousand balance sheets of companies of the industry, services, and commerce sectors, shows that the profitability index, which measures the profit and net sales ratio, reached 6.6% in the period. That is the highest result of the historical series started in 2000, one year after the exchange rate ceased following the band system and started floating freely. There are several reasons for this good performance, says Márcio Torres, Serasa's coordinator of studies. "The main reason is the improvement of the activity in the domestic market, favored by the expansion of the sum of salaries paid to workers throughout the year, increase of credit, and reduction of interests". In order to calculate the profit margin, Serasa adjusted the net profits of the companies, excluding equity adjustment and the extra-operational results. "The idea is to show only the net profits produced by the main activity of the companies", says Torres. Serasa's study included 3.2 thousand industry companies, 3.7 thousand commerce companies, and 2.8 thousand service companies. Until the previous year, the best ratio had been 2005's, when the average profitability of the companies reached 5.5% of the net sales. In the first half of 2007, the average of 6.6% increased due to the results of the services' companies, whose profitability represented 9.9% of the gross sales, taxes not included. That is the third consecutive year the service industry leads in profitability margin. In 2006, that index reached 7%. The providers of public utilities were the most profitable companies of this sector in the semester. In the energy segment, the margin reached 18.1%. Besides the effect of the valorization of the Real compared to the Dollar, which helped to reduce the financial cost of debts in foreign currency, the consumption of energy increased and the companies have adopted better management practices.