Analytics, Baltic, Business, Latvia, Markets and Companies

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In previous years Lithuanian CFOs were always more optimistic but this year Latvian CFOs showed the biggest optimism. Among the CFOs of large companies in Latvia, 61% are certain that 2018 will be a good year for business as opposed to 54% in Lithuania and 43% in Estonia.

More than two-thirds or 67% of large companies in Latvia expect turnover growth next year, and every tenth of the companies participating in the survey anticipates a higher than 10% growth of turnover.

Turnover growth is expected by 70% of large companies in Estonia and 58% in Lithuania.

As many as 75% of large companies in Latvia claim to be financially strong. The GDP growth which currently is the steepest in the last six years also gives rise to optimism.

Compared to last year, the number of companies seeing labor costs as one of the biggest challenges has doubled in Latvia. This year 50% of CFOs in Latvia said they were worried about rising labor costs. The respective rates in neighboring countries were 51% in Estonia and 56% in Lithuania.

SEB Banka carries out its survey among CFOs of large companies in the Baltic states every year. The latest survey, which was conducted in September 2017, covered 190 companies from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia that had reported more than EUR 20 million in annual turnover. In Latvia, 60 companies participated in the survey this time.