Survey objectives

The objective of this survey is to gain understanding of the business impact of COVID-19 crisis, based on development date.

The survey was run in June/July 2020 among 66 corporations registered as AmCham Czech Republic members or through Kearney direct contacts to major Czech corporations.

AmCham Kearney collaboration

This COVID-19 Business Impact Survey was developed jointly by the American Chamber of Commerce and Kearney. 
It was run and executed in a standard manner on independent platform in the Czech Republic, Holland, Slovenia and Croatia.

The survey provides a broad representation of the opinions of the business community in the Czech Republic.

66 responses were collected, with 18 large corporations, which belong to Czech TOP 100.

Respondents in the survey were clustered into four major groups:

1. Energy, industrials and automotive (incl. 3 out of 5 major CZ energy companies)
2. Professional and business services (incl. 4 out of 10 major CZ financial institutions)
3. hemicals and healthcare (incl. 1 out of 10 major CZ pharma companies)
4. Consumer, media, telco and education (CMTE) (incl. 2 out of 5 major CZ telco companies)

Executive summary:

New status quo favoring work from home

• ~70% of companies had prepared emergency plans in CZ, which is about 10 pp higher than in other CEE countries (e.g. Slovenia, Croatia)
• Share of employees on work-from-home (WFH): more than 75% of firms had above 50% share on WFH
• Work-from-home: only 5% firms state major challenges, 19% praise higher efficiency

Severe short-term situation expected to improve slowly

• Cash issues: 63% of firms expect cash issues within next 12 months
• Drop in revenues: corporations expect drop of more than 20% in the next 3 months, in the longer term around 10-15%
• Reduction of investments: vast majority of respondents expect CAPEX reduction between 5-10%

Long-term business impact: Digitization, Localization and M&A

• Preparedness: 93% of companies already identified longer term actions
• Digitization: >90% firms plan to engage more digitally with their customers
• Localization: 25% firms consider reducing purchases from China; 28% agree to reduce purchases from outside CZ
• M&A activities (acquisition or divestment) expected by 23% of respondents