Positive Trends Emerging at Privately Held Companies

FOXBusiness ^ | March 7, 2012 | Mary Ellen Biery, Sageworks Inc.

[Redcat]

Business trends at privately held companies, those millions of businesses that drive job creation and the U.S. GDP, confirm that things are turning around from the worst economic climate in generations.

Sageworks Inc. used its proprietary database of financial information on thousands of privately held companies to examine 2011 trends within key metrics of a company’s health: sales, net profit margin and debt-to-EBITDA.

For the full year in 2011, revenue for all privately held U.S. companies analyzed increased about 8%, on average, accelerating from the nearly 5% increase in 2010. Sageworks’ data shows manufacturing and wholesale merchants led the growth, with those sectors generating about 14% and 13% growth, respectively.

Such growth in an essentially flat economy speaks to the role manufacturing has played as demand for automobiles, trucks, machinery and equipment have improved. But even construction has shown signs of life, with both profitability and sales improving in 2011.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2012/03/07/positive-trends-emerging-at-privately-held-companies/#ixzz1oTqCD73S

[Redcat]

The spin continues. By October, we'll have the best economic conditions in a generation.....

[Just another Joe]

I guess I would be asking the questions -

#1 - Is that why gasoline is double what it cost 4 years ago?

#2 - Is that why over 50% of the public are on some form of government assistance?

#3 - Is that why foreclusures on privately owned homes is still an outrageous number?

They can spin, but the only thing they are spinning is the wool they are trying to pull over our eyes.

[C210N]

There may be plenty of spin, however there may also be some real positives as well...

The truth of the matter is, whatever remains of the private sector, billions of capitalistic micro-decisions are made with the available means, to strive towards progress in spite of the statist. This will be so, until such day as the last flickerings of economic freedom are snuffed out. Even with this regime, life must go on, we each must feed, house and cloth ourselves and our families... we are adjusting to new realities, as statist as they are.

Any positive economic news is in spite of zer0’s attempts to snuff us and our efforts out.

That said, of course we must still strive to obliterate these basturds this November, so that the constrained billions of economic micro-decisions, boot of govt on our necks, can blossom to gadzillions.

[TheWriterTX]

We're in a long-wave contraction. There will be peaks and valleys; the only difference is that the peaks will be progressively lower than the peaks that precede them.

Given the number of people who have been let go, it doesn't surprise me that businesses are starting to be profitable again. Most of the companies that I know have experience substanial layoffs and restructuring. When you are budgeting to run at just fractions of a point over cost, or to literally break even, it's a lot easier to make a profit.

Wish our FedGov ran as lean and mean at businesses are forced to. We wouldn't have a debt.