Industry overview
The Activities of head offices; management consultancy activities sector across EU27 average comprises approximately 800,879 enterprises employing about 1,444,665 people and generating €304.4 bn in net turnover in 2014. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a healthy operating margin of 11.3% of revenue in 2014, the sector reports €34.3 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
The Activities of head offices; management consultancy activities cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 65.0%, personnel at 29.1% and energy at – of turnover. Without a single dominant cost driver, margin management requires attention across the full operating envelope rather than focus on any one line.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2011 to 2014 the operating margin moved from 10.0% to 11.3% (+1.3 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.