The largest Portuguese companies, particularly those listed on the Stock Exchange, began publishing accounts for 2025. Profits generally grew and the economy grew. Good news.
It is bad that both companies and much of the media space have not contextualized these good results, announcing record profits in a simplistic way and providing judgments on speculative activity, for the exclusive benefit of shareholders, to the detriment of consumers and workers. Explicitly or subliminally, many articles and comments highlighted a latent aversion to profit and the market economy, forgetting that the absolute value of results only has meaning depending on the equity invested and investment prospects.
Judging results only by their absolute value implies that capital has no cost for shareholders or that the remuneration they expect from the investment of their money is indifferent to them.
The truth is that capital has a cost, equivalent to the loss of the alternative return that another investment, inside or outside the country, can bring to the investor. An inadequate return among us when, due to context costs and wrong public policies, leads to much of the already small Portuguese capital being drained to foreign markets where the remuneration is much higher and respects a fair relationship with investors.
This is also why our capital market has been languishing, with a Stock Exchange where only 35 to 40 companies are listed and only 16 of them make up the main index, incapable of attracting national or foreign savings in search of profitability and supporting the financing of the economy.
Without profits that fairly remunerate capital, there are no large companies, and without large companies, the ones that invest the most, innovate, pay better salaries and structure the business fabric of thousands of others, the economy loses and we all lose.
Today, the largest Portuguese group is almost three times smaller than the 10th Spanish group in terms of turnover and market value, when in the mid-1960s CUF was the largest industrial group in the Iberian Peninsula and the 5th largest chemical conglomerate in Europe.
Without profit there is no economy. Regenerating the idea of profit as a fair and adequate remuneration for invested capital is a true public service.
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