A 35 percent export growth pulled top companies out from the recession.
B isnode and Lider have been writing a sad chronicle of the recession in this joint issue for years. Even the best ones showed harsh negative trends. This year’s issue of the best 500 has finally welcomed the year of change. The best companies recorded growth in all the categories in 2014 – except in the number of employees. Now it is safe to say that last year marked the end of the recession for them. Current statistical data as well as the signals from the real sector show that the best are joined by average companies in existing the recession. Why are the best ones really the best? Not only because of income or profit growth, not even because of value added. All these are just consequences – of the export. During the pre-recession period of prosperity, the best companies had recorded a mere 12.4 percent of income from export (the 2009 data). Today, this share has increased to (even still rather modest) 17.9 percent.
Although the best ones have still not reached the income from golden 2007, last year’s export was bigger than ever before. The best 500 companies exported as much as 35 percent more than a year before! Such orientation is responsible for income growth, profit sharing, and finally, the arrival among the best ranked ones according to value added.
However, the focus on export, urged by Lider for years, has not arrived neither as a state nor a company project. Nobody was crazy to struggle with new markets when one could live like a king at home. Having faced insurmountable issues caused by Sanader, all the reserves had dried out fast. But just as the devil himself ate flies in meager times, so did domestic entrepreneurs started nibbling the crumbs from the global market. They were happy to stagnate at home, and grow abroad. The EU accession gave an additional push resulting in the last year’s record export of 6.55 billion euros recorded by the best 500 companies. The volume of change in business philosophy is shown in the comparison with 2009, which recorded 2.12 billion euro lower exports. Therefore, in times of necessity i.e. the recession, the best increased their export by 48 percent! Today, 129 from 500 best companies earn over 50 percent of their income from export. On the other side, there is still a dominant share of ‘non-exporters’: as many as 285 companies with less than 10 percent of export income. The middle is least represented – only 86 companies are ‘semi exporters’ – with 10 to 50 percent share of export in total income.
