7.8 billion euros more to shareholders

Corporate profits continue to rise. Energy companies, the aviation sector and employment agencies in particular earned significantly more in the recent quarter than in the same period last year.

Dutch corporate gross profit in July, August and September was even the highest since 1999, when the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) began tracking it. Together, the companies earned 84.5 billion euros before tax in those months. 9 billion more than a year earlier.

Their calculation only considered non-financial corporations.

A fraction of the billions of profit has been earned by companies in their own country. But the vast majority of the higher profit – 7.6 billion euros – was made by foreign branches of Dutch companies. The petrochemical industry, in particular, has seen its overseas subsidiaries well.

The treasury benefits from these profits. The companies also paid €2.4 billion more in taxes. Even bigger winners are the shareholders. They have received 7.8 billion euros more in profit distributions in recent months.

Those profits are high enough for employees to benefit too, Klaas Knot, chairman of De Nederlandsche Bank, said yesterday. News time. “We have a structurally tight labor market and energy and work will be scarce in the coming years. Higher pay is part of that.”

On average, according to Knot, employees are expected to earn 5 to 7 percent more. He acknowledges, however, that profits are not high enough in all industries to raise wages.