Mereo recently completed its fourth annual revenue performance study of Fortune 500, Global 500 and Russell 2000 companies for the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years.
Once again, we have uncovered similar trends to previous studies — which has been consistent since the recessionary period of 2007 and 2008 — and we continue to be surprised by the underperformance of most companies’ revenue line.While there was some improvement as compared to last year, a relatively small percentage of companies can claim strong annual revenue performance. For instance, nearly 48% of Fortune 500 companies saw their revenue actually shrink last year (compared with 51% the year before) and nearly 67% of Global 500 companies reported declining revenue (as compared with 73% the year before). The somewhat brighter area was in mid-size companies, where a comparatively small 29% (still nearly 1 out of 3) of companies shrank this past year.
If we generously define strong growth as