Compared to the findings from last year’s Global CEO Survey, leaders are significantly less confident about their company’s revenue growth outlook over the next 12 months. Confidence in the three-year revenue growth outlook has also declined, although the decrease is less significant.
What explains this ebbing confidence? Although CEOs remain generally optimistic about growth prospects for the global economy, they’re less confident in many countries about the local economic outlook. Industry cycles are also at work. For example, lower confidence about short-term revenue growth among insurance CEOs comes as a golden period for industry profitability is now ending. Equally, oil executives are facing weak demand and industry-wide concern about oversupply.
Beyond these sector-specific dynamics, CEOs generally have grown more concerned about a range of near-term threats, including macroeconomic volatility, cyber risk, technology disruption, and geopolitical conflict. Almost a third (31%) say their company is highly or extremely exposed to the risk of a significant financial loss from cyber threats in the year ahead, up from 24% in last year’s survey and 21% two years ago. Cyber risks now rank alongside macroeconomic volatility as the top threats identified by CEOs. About eight in ten (84%) say they’re planning to improve enterprise-wide cybersecurity practices in response to geopolitical risk, underlining the interconnected nature of the threats they face.
Uncertainty relating to tariffs is a new consideration as governments recalibrate tax policy to support national interests, secure supply chains, and address fiscal shortfalls. One in five CEOs (20%) say their company is highly or extremely exposed to the risk of a significant financial loss from tariffs over the next 12 months. Trepidation varies greatly by geography, ranging from just 6% on average across Middle Eastern countries to 28% on the Chinese Mainland, 30% in Turkey, and 35% in Mexico. Among US CEOs, 22% say their company is highly or extremely exposed to tariffs, which is close to the global average.
Almost a third of CEOs (29%) globally say tariffs will reduce their company’s net profit margin in the year ahead, versus 60% expecting little to no change and 6% anticipating margin improvement. Among those expecting margin compression due to tariffs, most anticipate a decline of less than 15%.
