To each company their own prize: On Thursday, March 7, French media company Vivendi published the final 2023 results for the multinational companies that make up France's CAC 40 index, celebrating a year of record profits for TotalEnergies, Veolia, Renault, Schneider and Stellantis; fully-booked orders for Schneider and Thales; high margins for Hermès, Renault and L'Oréal. Although luxury group Kering deplored a "difficult year for the group," on the whole, France's champions excelled.
Taken together, the 38 CAC 40 companies that have published their financial statements in recent weeks – with Alstom and Pernod-Ricard having deferred financial reportin – have posted record net profits: €153.6 billion, compared with €142 billion in 2022, which itself marked an all-time high according to data compiled by fintech company Scalens.
"It took CAC 40 companies more than ten years after the 2008 financial crisis to clear the €100 billion a year mark. The Covid crisis has enabled them to break through this glass ceiling. And since then, they've managed to maintain high profit levels," pointed out Arnaud Girod, the head of economic research and strategy at Kepler Cheuvreux financial service company. So it's hardly surprising that on Thursday, against a backdrop of soaring world stock markets, the CAC 40 index closed above 8,000 points for the first time in its history.
Shareholders will be rubbing their hands in glee. Dividends allocated for 2023 – which will be distributed in 2024 – will cumulatively total €67.8 billion (versus €67.5 billion in 2022). Moreover, these are supplemented by €30.1 billion (€24.6 billion in 2022) in share buybacks, which have become increasingly popular in France despite political condemnation. In the autumn, during discussions on the 2024 finance bill, MPs ranging from Renaissance (Macron's ruling party) and its MoDem allies to La France Insoumise (radical left) and the Parti Socialiste (left), all put forward amendments aimed at taxing dividends or share buybacks.
On the eve of the European elections
On March 22, 2023, during a televised interview at the height of the debate on the French pension reform, President Emmanuel Macron himself denounced the "cynicism at work" in these groups "who make such exceptional revenue that they end up using this money to buy back their own shares," promising the implementation of a contribution so that "workers will be able to benefit" from this money.
As this mechanism never saw the light of day, these record-breaking 2023 figures are bound to rekindle the debate on fairly sharing profits in the midst of the European election campaign. This is all the more likely given that TotalEnergies (€19.3 billion) – the company with the highest profits – was closely followed by a turbo-charged Stellantis (€18.6 billion), led by Carlos Tavares, the highest-paid CEO in the CAC 40, who received €36.5 million in compensation for 2023.
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