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Sageworks Private Company Report indicates slowest rate of sales growth since 2009
RALEIGH, NC (January 31, 2014) – Sageworks released its first Private Company Report of 2014 today. The report, which can be found in full here, is a quarterly update on the health of American private companies and small businesses.
According to financial statements analyzed by Sageworks, a financial information company and the leader in the financial analysis of privately held companies, U.S. businesses grew sales at a rate of 5.4 percent in 2013. This is the slowest rate of sales growth since 2009, when private companies, reeling from the recession, saw their sales contract an average of 5.3 percent. Sageworks Chairman Brian Hamilton says that this decline in the rate of growth is “concerning.”
Overall, businesses posted strong profit margins in 2013. However, as Hamilton explains, these margins may be a result of business owners being cautious to take on overhead in the form of new employees and assets.
An analysis of smaller businesses (with less than $10 million in annual sales) showed a similar decline in the rate of sales growth. These companies, like private companies of all sales ranges, also experienced expanding net profits margins in 2013.
Sageworks collects approximately 1,000 private company financial statements every day from financial professionals. Because new statements are added every day, these ratios are not static and are subject to revision.
About the Report
Sageworks releases a quarterly update on the health of privately held companies in the United States. It includes metrics on the average U.S. privately held company, as well as the performance of notable sectors and industries.
Private companies drive nearly 50 percent of private nonfarm GDP and 65 percent of new job creation in the United States; private-company financial performance as measured in this report is an essential gauge of the overall U.S. economy.
About our data
Sageworks possesses a proprietary database of privately held company financial statements aggregated by industry. Each day, approximately 1,000 of these financial statements are collected by Sageworks from accounting firms, banks and credit unions through a cooperative data model with Sageworks’ clients. The data is segmented and can be queried by 1,400 industry codes, 70 financial metrics, company size and geographic location.
About Sageworks
Raleigh, NC-based Sageworks is a financial information company that provides financial analysis and industry benchmarking solutions to accounting firms and financial institutions. Sageworks’ data and applications are used by thousands of banks and accounting firms across North America. The company has been named to the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S. and to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.