Cerved, companies extend payment times up to 80 days

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Delays in payments by companies are growing which, after a virtuous 2022, lengthen the time frame by up to 80 days to settle the amount due. According to Cerved’s analysis, plastic packaging, motorway management, hydrocarbon extraction, air transport, but above all pharmaceutical specialties and raw materials are the sectors characterized by a high concentration of large companies, which are able to negotiate more advantageous payment terms, but still pay more late, putting medium-small companies in difficulty.

The average payment times of Italian companies in the first quarter of 2023 grew by 1.6 days, rising to 66.8, compared to the first quarter of 2022, a phenomenon which, according to Cerved analysts, affected the whole country.

Among the main pieces of evidence brought to light by a recent study by Cerved on the payment habits of Italian companies (agreed times, distribution of delays, missed payments) it is in fact found that the combination of the lengthening of the average terms agreed in particular by large companies is 1.4 days, while the flare-up in the days of delay of the other size classes reaches +0.2, a trend that restarted at the end of 2022 after a year of constant decline.

Big companies benefit

Exploiting their negotiating weight, the largest companies have managed to pay on average in 70.6 days agreed against 64.8 days last year (much more than the current 58.2 of SMEs and 43 of micro companies), to which they add 11 days of delay, while smaller companies, on the contrary, see a tightening of deadlines: this translates into a lack of liquidity which leads not only to greater delays (+0.5 days compared to the first quarter of 2022), but increasingly missed payments.

«Payment habits are an important thermometer to monitor in order to promptly detect possible alarm signals – comments Andrea Mignanelli, CEO of Cerved -. The economic situation we are going through, characterized by high inflation and rising interest rates, has generated a deterioration in the financial fundamentals of companies: the consequent drop in demand, the increase in costs, the slowdown in profitability and the exacerbation of risk have led, on the one hand, to renegotiating payment times, on the other, where this has not been possible, to increasing delays and insolvencies”.