Financial statement ratios of Austrian businesses

Financial statement ratios of Austrian businesses broken down according to the Austrian Statistical Classification of Economic Activities

The financial statement ratios of Austrian businesses available on this website are the product of a cooperation between the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and the Austrian Institute for SME Research. The calculation of the financial ratios is based on a joint sample derived from the entire stock of financial statements data the OeNB and the Institute for SME Research have at their disposal for the period under review. The financial statement ratios presented on this website are not directly comparable with those previously published in OeNB publications. They are characterized by the following features:

Currently, altogether 38 ratios are available, broken down by sectors and size classes. For definitions of the financial statement ratios please see the link below (“Definitions of the financial statement ratios”).
The underlying data material stems from different databases.
The various ratios are organized according to the Austrian Statistical Classification of Economic Activities (ÖNACE) and are available in categories corresponding to the sections, sectors and divisions of the NACE classification.
Assignment to a size class is based on turnover. There are five size classes with threshold values of currently EUR 1 million, EUR 7 million, EUR 40 million and EUR 100 million.

The statistical processing of data material continues to be based on an evaluation of median and quartile values; this method does not presuppose a normal distribution of data, but nevertheless indicates their dispersion.

The financial statement ratios for each business enterprise are calculated individually and sorted in ascending order. The middle value of these ratios is called the median: half the ratios are below and half of them are above the median. The quartile values, then, are located between the median and the extreme values: 25% of ratios are below the lower quartile (“LQU”) and 25% are above the upper quartile (“UQU”). Consequently, the area between the two quartiles contains 50% of all financial ratios.

Ratios derived from data sets containing less than ten observations have been excluded from publication on the internet. This is mainly due to

the applicable data protection requirements
the (in most cases) statistical inconsistency of such ratios and their consequently relatively low informative value concerning sectoral developments

Comparable ratios of other EU countries are available in the BACH database. Please note that the BACH database contains solely data of nonfinancial corporations and that the enterprise size classes are based on the recommendation of the European Commission of May 6, 2003 (2003/361/EC) with reference to turnover.

For further information on the BACH database, please visit the above website address.