Italy's Got Talent: How Italian leading companies in confectionery industry overcame the crisis

The crisis that spread worldwide since 2007 started from the financial

sector and ended to affect also real economy. This process has attracted the

attention of many scholars seeking to study its causes and impacts.

Notwithstanding many works on this topic, the impact of the crisis on

specific industries is still rather unexplored. The present work seeks to

address this issue by analyzing the confectionery industry, with particular

emphasis for Italian market leaders, Ferrero S.p.A. and Perfetti Van Melle

S.r.l.. The aim of the study is to assess if they have been successful in

tackling the crisis, keeping a satisfactory level of profitability associated to a

good financial health notwithstanding ongoing difficulties. Moreover, we

seek to analyze the strategies the companies employed to survive the crisis.

The concern of the paper is both quantitative and qualitative. Thus, we

calculated a complete set of indicators using a specific methodology for

financial statement analysis which has been conceived especially for

studying Italian firms; these data have been integrated with other information

retrieved from the annual reports of the companies (especially the notes to

the accounts and the directors’ report). The analysis highlights that both the

firms benefit from a good financial health, with Perfetti Van Melle

presenting a large amount of liquidity. On the contrary, liquidity should be

the main concern of Ferrero because of an excessive reliance on current

liabilities. Both the firms have a good level of profitability, even if Perfetti

Van Melle’s one is decreasing. The key-strategies for the success of these

firms are ongoing investments in state-of-the-art plant and machinery, an

increasing use of equity as the main source of funding, along with huge

investments in research and advertising.