Spanish top companies’ sales signal recovery towards pre-crisis levels

Talk about green shoots in Europe has mostly been muted by the ever more turbulent combination of a slow global economy with the decreasing gap between core and peripheral euro States towards crisis. But random rays of optimism still appear where few expect them: since 2008, the Spanish 5,000 top companies’ total turnover has increased comparing to the previous year.

According to a recent Iberinform study, 80.4 percent of the country’s largest corporations have avoided negative net results in their latest financial reports, a higher number than the 75.4 percent of the sector in general.

Even so, “the crisis has not only affected small and medium size firms,” Iberinform director general Yon Munilla said, “we have identified up to 164 companies that were in the 2011’s raking but have closed or defaulted.”

The changes also show the internal correction over the industrial sector, and it could be taken as proof that Spain is fast leaving its housing bubble behind. Sales from the construction sector, which represented 12 percent of all sales last year, have fallen to 9.7 percent in 2012. On the other hand, the activities that have best sorted the crisis out this year are energy and manufacturing.

The paper noted that corporations are today more concentrated in the regions of  Madrid and Catalonia, with 55 percent of all 5,000 companies and 67 percent of total sales.