Townsville business confidence volatile but optimists have upper hand Firms upbeat on future
BUSINESS confidence in Townsville continues to be volatile but remains in positive territory, with most companies expecting profit to increase this quarter, a PVW Partners survey has found.
The firm conducts a quarterly survey of about 300 business owners and managers, with a positive score indicating more optimists than pessimists about conditions for the quarter ahead.
The September quarter result for the Townsville Business Confidence Index was 2.6 points, an 8.4 point fall on the previous June quarter, which recorded a record 12.5 point jump on the March survey score.
PVW managing partner Carl Valentine said the continuing volatility indicated business owners were still cautiously finding their way forward in a generally improving but challenging economic climate.
“There continues to be many sectors of our economy, like residential housing development, that are operating well below historic levels,” Mr Valentine said.
“It still remains to be seen if a longer- term trend of sustained business confidence will emerge.”
Mr Valentine said respondents were expecting stable employment, with 80 per cent seeing no change to employee numbers.
This was representative of both large and small businesses. He said the remaining 20 per cent were evenly split between those expecting to increase employee numbers and those expecting to see a de- crease. Mr Valentine said a further positive aspect of the results was the vast majority of respondents expecting stable or increasing levels of sales and consumer demand.
Smaller businesses and those identifying as benefiting from the mining sector were slightly more confident than larger businesses, Mr Valentine said.
“While there is shorter term volatility in the index, there are medium term indications of stable or improving profit expectations for our businesses,” he said.
Asked about expectations for profitability in 2018- 19, 42.9 per cent expected profit to remain steady, 48.6 per cent expected higher profit and 8.5 per cent expected a decline on last year.
“While profit is only one measure of business performance, it is an important one in terms of the vibrancy of our private sector and the collective ability of businesses to continue investing and creating employment opportunities in North Queensland,” Mr Valentine said.
“As a community we should continue doing all that we can to support the great businesses in our economy and letting them get on being the engine of growth in North Queensland.”