METI publishes a barometer on the financing conditions of mid-sized companies. Their general delegate, Alexandre Montay, was the eco guest of franceinfo on Friday September 29 to discuss their health.
There are 5,500 mid-sized companies (ETI) in France. These are companies with 250 to 5,000 employees with a turnover of 1.5 billion euros maximum. METI, the movement of mid-sized companies, publishes with the Palatine bank its 10th barometer of mid-cap financing for September, audits carried out on 1,200 companies. Alexandre Montay, general delegate of METI was the eco guest of franceinfo.
franceinfo: You tell us that after a promising start, the year risks ending on a less serene note. For what ?
Alexandre Montay: We sense a decline in activity in mid-sized companies. It’s not specifically French, it’s very linked to the international situation in China and the United States. So we have a slowdown in activity which is notable in our companies, which are also facing various shocks. A cost shock, we will undoubtedly come back to this during this interview. A shock of complexity too, because we have to see what is happening on a European scale, particularly around environmental standards. A shock and then an absolutely colossal wall of investments that awaits them to engage in environmental transformation.
In your barometer, nearly four out of ten mid-sized companies consider that their situation has deteriorated over a year: cost shock, inflationary crisis, especially energy crisis?
Energy crisis, which has weighed heavily on the general management of companies, released a very recent study showing that 36% of French companies experienced a fairly substantial drop in their margins due to the energy crisis. And there, it weighed on mid-sized companies. Moreover, we had worked with the government to ensure that they were supported, faced with multiples, by three, by four of their energy costs. So it naturally weighed. And then you also have wage inflation since mid-sized companies in particular have supported their employees. Wages have kept pace with inflation in mid-sized companies.
There are still 70% of managers of mid-sized companies who are confident about the end of the year. Two thirds who also expect an increase in turnover. Isn’t everything bad?
No, this barometer is not showing concern. It is rather vigilance on a certain number of weak signals which, subsequently, can become strong signals that we find in macroeconomic studies. The slowdown in activity and above all, one of the essential points, is the profitability of companies which interests us very much. So, the glass is half full, it is the resilience of mid-sized companies in the territories, companies generally predominantly family-owned, which means that they do not overreact to crises. After the end of the crisis we saw a very strong acceleration in activity, investments and order books. And it is therefore this dynamic which is underway and which we are seeing today and which allows 70% of leaders to be confident.
The 2024 budget, which has just been presented by the government, provides, in particular, a tax credit for green investment. Are you satisfied ?
This is naturally going in the right direction for companies that position themselves on green technologies. But the major challenge of this environmental transformation, which is a real industrial revolution, is to swap all of the companies’ production processes. Companies that are not just gigafactories or positioned on green technologies, companies that produce materials and traditional industrial goods. These are also the companies we need to think about.
The 2024 budget also provides for a postponement of part of the production tax reduction, the elimination of the CVAE is finally spread out. Do you understand this decision?
We understand, we understand this decision, but we regret it. We must distinguish what is of the order of competitiveness in our opinion, from the order of deficit reduction. We were talking earlier about the launch effect or the dynamic of mid-sized companies. The competitiveness policy that the government has undertaken in recent years, whether with the reduction in IS (Corporate Tax) or even more recently with the reduction in production taxes, has gradually enabled France to get on the path to competitive realignment. Today, France is out of step with its European neighbors. There is no German miracle, there is no Austrian miracle. There is no Italian miracle in terms of industry. There is simply a deficit in French competitiveness compared to the European average. The government was committed to a trajectory. This trajectory has borne fruit and with results, and we simply regret that this trajectory is not continued, that it is not accelerated. We look very closely at the figures like you. For environmental transformation alone, over the next ten years, 26 billion euros of additional investments will concern growth SMEs and mid-sized companies. This is an absolutely colossal wall of investment. And therefore, if France is too far behind the European average, it will not be able to lead the race. However, it has all the assets to do so.