The latest "Analysis of Industrial Sectors" by Prometeia and Intesa Sanpaolo describes the situation of Italian manufacturing companies which, four years after the start of the crisis, find themselves facing a crossroads: to relaunch or lose everything.
It is the cold reality of the numbers that reveals the complexity of the situation. In fact, if in 2012 Italian industry will face the decline in turnover forecast in the latest Report "Analysis of Industrial Sectors" by Prometeia and Intesa Sanpaolo - more than 5% at constant prices - over 10% of Italian companies could find themselves in a condition of serious illiquidity (i.e. when the corporate liquidity is not able to cover the liabilities of the cash flow), an antechamber for bankruptcy or for the extraordinary injection of fresh financial resources. In fact, nearly a third of illiquid firms have actually defaulted over the past decade.
A number of companies "at risk" not too far from that of the two-year period 2008-'09, when, however, the decreases in turnover were three times higher, demonstrating how many of the structural competitive limits of Italian industry have not been resolved and today are aggravated by increasingly global competition.
The percentage of companies in serious conditions of illiquidity at the end of 2012 clearly identifies the different types of sectors and the characteristics of the companies: the producers of durable consumer goods and those most linked to the world of construction are in fact those with the greatest difficulty, affecting around one in five companies in the automotive, furniture and in products and materials for construction, especially of small dimensions.
For these same sectors and companies, the percentage of problematic situations at the end of 2012 could even exceed that of 2009, with inevitable repercussions and downward adjustments in the number of operators and employment levels. Conversely, the sectors of the electrotechnical supply chain and some typical Made in Italy products such as fashion and food would present the best situations, particularly in the larger companies, capable of competing on international markets with brand, support services and commercial networks with only 5% of companies in difficult conditions.
Despite the help offered by the markets in the two-year period 2010-'11, with demand recovering in most sectors and countries, Italian companies have in fact failed to improve their profitability. Also from the "Analysis of the Industrial Sectors" Report by Prometeia and Intesa Sanpaolo, from the observation of a large sample of financial statements relating to 2011, it emerges that the average margins of Italian industry suffered consistent and widespread declines in most of the manufacturing sectors and business types. A sacrifice, the one on margins, which while on the one hand has allowed many companies to remain on the market by restarting the production processes after the stop in 2009, on the other has however compromised the already fragile financial balance of many of them and ( re)highlighted the still strategic role of the price factor when other competitive levers are not available.
Only in a few cases, represented by leading sectors of Italian industry on foreign markets and by more internationalized companies, the renunciations in terms of margins implemented to defend or conquer shares on world markets can instead be interpreted as a bet on the future and not as a move dictated by the survival instinct.
The need and urgency therefore emerges for a large part of Italian industry to develop new strategies by supporting organisational, productive and commercial investments, increasingly on an international scale. However, the thinning of the financial resources of many companies requires external aid to implement these innovations: the role of credit is therefore crucial, but so is that of industrial policy which can promote as a paradigm the virtuous examples that have not been lacking even in this phase.
Concrete cases, of companies that have been able to combine efficiency and development, growth and attention to workers and the environment, united by the use of all the strategic levers available and therefore by a broad and complete vision of the critical issues and possible solutions.
Two lessons can be learned from the troubled post-Lehman Brothers story: the first is that the winning cases, as well as the losing ones, are present in all industrial sectors and include all types of companies, by size and international projection. The recipe to get back on track of the possible manufacturing decline is therefore not unique, but must be the best achievable with the ingredients available.
Among the ingredients, and we are at the second lesson, that of the financial management of doing business cannot be ignored, to be considered in all respects a further strategic lever available to companies for the achievement of their goals.
It is yet another bet for our country's economy, which will require everyone's commitment to succeed put the best that industrial Italy has to offer on the plate of global competition. To raise or lose everything, before the next “rien goes plus".
