Dive Brief:
- Overall confidence in business and economic conditions rose in Q4 among CFOs surveyed at some of the largest U.S. companies for the second consecutive quarter, notching the highest level since late 2021, according to the latest quarterly CFO Signals report from Deloitte.
- Finance leader appetite for taking risks also rebounded after plunging in the second quarter, with 59% seeing now as a good time to make bigger bets, compared to 12% in the year-earlier quarter. “Except for the second quarter of the year, CFO respondents’ enthusiasm about their own company’s financial prospects has been going in one direction: due north,” the report states.
- While their outlook is brightening on a number of fronts, executives are also warily watching the capital markets, with the biggest cohort (43%) viewing it as being overvalued, 27% viewing it as undervalued and roughly a third neutral on their views.
Dive Insight:
The Big Four firm’s findings align with a Business Roundtable survey which found CEO expectations for sales and capital investment inched up, yet the proportion of CEOs who plan to reduce employment rather than raise it has increased this year to the highest level since the Great Recession.
In contrast, for CFOs in the fourth quarter labor or talent and hiring ranked as the third most concerning internal risk, after cost management and efficiency and production, while the economy, inflation and cybersecurity were cited as the top external risks by the finance executives.
Earlier this year, Deloitte found that finance and accounting talent shortages were among the biggest workforce challenges cited by CFOs, with some finance chiefs reporting that they were playing a bigger role in finding and hiring workers to staff their teams, CFO Dive previously reported.
In the latest survey, a majority of respondents gave positive grades to the current equity and debt financing markets, with 56% of executives saying it’s an “attractive” time to issue stock to raise capital and 53% measuring the current climate as “attractive” for borrowing money to raise capital.
