The parallelism with the horror genre does not do them justice
The zombie companies are not necessarily the walking dead, they can recover and re-enter the market with full rights, and this happens more easily to those financed by the Guarantee fund which therefore demonstrates its effectiveness as an instrument of stability and resilience. In fact, in the two-year period 2020-21, to receive funding was 28.8% (8,102) of the companies considered zombies in 2019 and a good 69.6% of them (against 43.1% of the unfunded ones) managed to get back on their feet thanks to 3.1 billion subsidy euros.
However, the study found that the remaining 30.4% have exited the market or are still zombies, taking with them 1.3 billion lost fundingthe. In total, the zombie companies recovered exceeded 40,000 in the two-year period 2020-21. The zombie one is one categorization more mobile than you think: currently, based on the 2021 financial statements which are the latest available, in Italy there are 23,262 – made up of 12,456 who have not recovered (still zombies) and 10,806 new entries – for 45.9 % (10,675) financed by the Guarantee Fund with 7 billion euros against 20.4 billion of financial debt entered in the balance sheet.
That’s what was found Cerved, the tech company that helps the country system protect itself from risk and grow sustainably, which has just released a study on the identikit and evolution of the life cycle of zombie companies: companies that are unable to operate according to normal market conditions – because they are heavily indebted and unable to repay the interest on the debt through their own profits – “artificially” kept alive through loans and subsidies.
Worry about the rising cost of money
“The reasons why this happens are linked to safeguarding the country’s economic stability and employment levels – he comments Andrea Mignanelli, chief executive officer of Cerved – as well as the need to contain the risk of insolvency and the generation of new non-performing loans. However, the presence of zombie companies weighs on the production system, because it diverts capital that could guarantee higher returns and greater productivity elsewhere, makes it difficult for healthy companies and startups to access credit, and contributes to the. stagnation and discourages the entry of new operators, increases the cost of money and exposes the system more to the transmission of financial shocks. The crisis generated by Covid has been managed with aid and loans. Now, however, targeted interventions are needed, based on tools, data and technologies that allow for a correct screening of the companies in which to invest”.
Per structural reasons, l’Italia It is one of OECD countries with the highest incidence of zombie companies, more than halved since the 2012 crisis but growing again in 2020 due to the pandemic when the sharp increase in companies at risk required support measures that kept very financially fragile companies on the market: in fact, still at the end of 2022, serious procedures such as bankruptcies, judicial and subsidiary liquidations were still in decline (7,207, -20.3 % compared to the end of 2021) despite i price increases of energy, theinflation and the rise of the rates have exacerbated the problems of liquid assets of businesses.
However, Cerved’s research – which has reconstructed the evolution of zombie companies over the last 10 years by integrating the historical series of financial statements of all Italian capital companies – the risk scores (Cerved Group Score) and business closures – demonstrates that i flows incoming and outgoing are actually very dynamic: in 2020 the zombies had shot up to 40,218 (figures not seen since 2015) due to 26,685 new entries and this despite more than half (14,566) having recovered that same year; in the two-year period 2020-21, 22.6% (6,361) definitively exited the market following serious procedures (2,865) or were no longer active (3,496), with a aftermath of €12.2 billion of potential non-performing loans (NPL), while 7,474 companies (26.6%) remained in the same condition.
In 2021 the economic recovery favored the exit from the status of zombies of 27,762 enterprises
These are companies with 71 billion of financial debts remedied, but another 10,806 entered them. As for the financial debts, in 2021 they were increasing: 130.4 billion euros (of which only 20.4 were financed by the Guarantee Fund) against 128.6 billion in 2019, despite the fact that the number of zombie companies had dropped from 28,099 to 23,262; average debt was also higher (5.6 million against 4.6).
Metalworking, logistics and transport, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, insurance, financial and non-financial services, consumer goods, electromechanics and the home system prove to be the compartments with the highest percentage of zombie companies recovered out of the total in 2019 (between 60.2% and 52.7%), while those where companies find it more difficult to fully return to the market are the fashion system, means of transport, construction , fuels, energy and utilities, electrical engineering and information technology (between 43.5% and 47.9%). If instead one considers theincidence of zombie companies in each sector, in 2021 agriculture and livestock (5.2%), mass consumption (5%), fuels and energy and utilities (4.1%) means of transport (3.8%) and the fashion system ( 3.5%) were the most affected, out of an Italian transversal average of 2.4%; on the contrary, financial and insurance services (0.2%) and real estate (0.5%) are hardly touched by the phenomenon.
Businesses restart in Trentino
As for theterritorial analysis, Trentino Alto Adige has the highest percentage of zombie companies healed out of the total in 2019 (61.2%), followed by Abruzzo (55.7%), Calabria (55.2%), Sardinia (54.9%) , Basilicata (53.5%), Piedmont and Sicily (53.3%), Puglia (52.8%), Veneto (51.8%) and Marche (50.5%). Black jersey instead in Valle d’Aosta (44.2%); with slightly better results, but still at the bottom of the ranking, we find Liguria (47.2%), Tuscany (47.5%), Umbria (48%), Molise (48.8%), Emilia Romagna (48. 9%), Friuli Venezia Giulia (49.5%), Lazio and Lombardy (49.6%), Campania (50%).
Instead, observing thetrend of zombie companies between 2019 and 2021, we see that the strongest reduction occurred in Sardinia (-42.9%), followed by Sicily (-32.3%), Calabria (-30.1%), Abruzzo (-26.8%), Basilicata (-25.7%) and Puglia (-24.6%). On the contrary, minimal variations occurred in Umbria (-3.4%), Tuscany (-4.3%) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (-5.7%), while in Valle d’Aosta the trend is growing ( from 52 to 56, equal to 7.7% more).
(Ticker)