California & Nevada small business owners remain cautiously optimistic for 2016
Each year, TMC Financing surveys our small business clients in California and Nevada to understand their outlook and predictions for the coming year. For 2016, the outlook is generally favorable, according to the 240 small business owners who completed our survey.
“Roughly 60 percent predict their business and revenue will continue to grow this year,” TMC EVP Kurt Chambliss said. “Small business owners appear to be cautiously optimistic about 2016. Enthusiasm isn’t quite as high as 2015, but the responses are positive,” he said.
According to our survey, 60 percent of business owners believe their business growth for 2016 will be better than 2015, while 34 percent expect it to be about the same and 6 percent expect less growth. Those figures are closer to predictions for 2014 than for 2015.
Fifty-nine percent of business owners reported that their 2015 business revenue increased from 2014, which echoes the 59 percent who reported growth from 2014 over 2013. For 2016, 62 percent of respondents expect revenue to increase over 2015, while 33 percent predict no change and 5 percent predict a decrease.
The hiring outlook for 2016 is down slightly from 2015 predictions: 42 percent expect to increase their workforce, compared to 56 percent in 2015. However, business owners predict their workforce to be stable in 2016: 55 percent expect to maintain their current workforce and just 3 percent expect to downsize, compared to 40 percent who expected to maintain and 4 percent who downsize in 2015.
Slightly more than one quarter of business owners are contemplating new real estate in 2016: 16 percent are considering a real estate purchase and 11 percent plan to lease additional space, while 73 percent have no plans to expand physically.
The TMC Annual Small Business Outlook Survey for 2016 was conducted by email in November and December of 2015. The sample size of 240 from a total population of 1427 borrowers who closed loans with TMC in the past three years provides a confidence level of 95% with a margin of error of 5.77%. The views and opinions represented here are from a collection of business owners throughout California and Nevada and do not reflect the views of TMC Financing nor the U.S. Small Business Administration.