“In the first quarter of 2025, the profitability of companies—measured by the ratio between earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and total assets—was 9.3% (compared to 9.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 9.5% in the same period last year),” according to the corporate statistics released today by the Bank of Portugal (BdP).
Despite these slight reductions, the BdP noted in a statement that there were no “significant variations in the last six quarters.”
A sectoral analysis highlighted that the profitability of assets saw more pronounced declines in electricity, gas, and water (-1.8 percentage points) and in holding companies (-1.5 percentage points), falling to 8.6% and 6.8%, respectively.
In holding companies, this reduction was attributed by the BdP to lower subsidiary earnings, whereas in electricity, gas, and water it was due to increased production costs (gas and electricity).
Industries also experienced a decrease of 0.9 percentage points from the previous year, bringing the figure to 10.2%.
Conversely, transport and storage companies (up 1.4 percentage points to 14.7%) and construction (up 1.0 percentage points to 8.7%) recorded the largest year-on-year increases, partly due to growth in gross results.
Commerce increased by 0.2 percentage points, and other services rose by 0.1 percentage points, reaching 10.0% and 8.9%, respectively.
Overall, in private companies, profitability was positive but decreased by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year, to 9.3%. In public companies, profitability rose by 0.4 percentage points year-on-year, reaching 7.1%.
In the area of financial autonomy, measured by the weight of equity in total assets, there was no sequential change, but it rose by 1.5 percentage points compared to the first quarter of the previous year, maintaining the maximum since the beginning of the series in 2006 and extending the upward trend that began in the third quarter of 2020.
Within the private sector, compared to the same quarter last year, financial autonomy, reflecting the retention of earnings by companies, increased in all sectors—except for holding companies (which remained at 60.8%)—reaching an overall value of 45.8%.
Compared to the previous year, significant increases were noted in electricity and water (up 2.3 percentage points to 43.7%), other services (up 1.8 percentage points to 46.1%), and industries (up 1.7 percentage points to 50.0%).
Among public companies, financial autonomy grew from 37.1% in March 2024 to 37.7% in the first three months of this year.
Financial autonomy among small and medium-sized enterprises rose by 1.9 percentage points to 46.3%, while in large enterprises it rose by 1.1 percentage points to 40.9%.
The proportion of financing obtained in total assets decreased from 27.6% to 26.8% year-on-year during the first quarter of this year, while the costs of obtained financing fell to 4.7% year-on-year.
The coverage of companies’ financing costs, a “measure of financial pressure that quantifies the number of times that the EBITDA generated by companies surpasses their financing costs,” increased from 7.1 times to 7.2 times.
