Latest news and stories about corporate profits in Portugal for expats and residents.
Repsol's profits soared 153.8% in the first quarter of the year, reaching 929 million euros, driven by capital gains that reflect the impact of rising prices for crude oil and refined products.
Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain want extra corporate profits generated during the Mideast conflict to be distributed fairly.
The largest Portuguese companies, particularly those listed on the stock exchange, have begun publishing their 2025 accounts. Profits have generally grown, as has the economy. This is good news. However, it is unfortunate that both companies and much of the media have failed to contextualise these results, simplistically announcing record profits and encouraging judgements of speculative activity that exclusively benefit shareholders at the expense of consumers and workers. Many articles and commentaries have shown a latent aversion to profit and the market economy, forgetting that the absolute value of results is only meaningful in relation to the equity invested and investment prospects. Judging results solely by their absolute value implies that capital has no cost for shareholders or that the return they expect from their investment is irrelevant. The truth is that capital has a cost, equivalent to the loss of the alternative return that another investment, inside or outside the country, could bring to the investor. A return that is misaligned here, due to contextual costs and misguided public policies, leads to much of the already scarce Portuguese capital being drained to foreign markets where remuneration is much higher and respects a fair relationship with investors. This is also why our capital market has been withering, with a stock exchange where only 35 to 40 companies are listed and only 16 of them make up the main index, unable to attract national or foreign savings in search of profitability to support the financing of the economy. Without profits that fairly remunerate capital, there are no large companies, and without large companies—which are the ones that invest the most, innovate, pay better wages, 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 largest Spanish group in terms of turnover and market value, whereas in the mid-1960s, CUF was the largest industrial group on 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.
