Revenue growth of Greek businesses by industry

Revenue growth for Greek businesses in 2024 was 5.40% for the median company. I took the 69,579 companies that uploaded financial statements to GEMI, the Greek General Commercial Registry, for both 2023 and 2024. I measured how much the revenue of each one changed and kept the median change. Three in five grew, and the older the company, the slower: those more than ten years old grew 3.66%, a little above inflation.

I measured the same for the two previous financial years: 18.46% in 2022 and 8.36% in 2023. The rate falls every year, and so does inflation.

How much revenue grew, 2022-2024

2022 is a year of recovery from COVID. Accommodation and food service grew 62.94% and arts and entertainment 66.54%, on top of 2021 revenue that was still low.

Above inflation, using the GDP deflator, the median company grew 1.96% in 2023 and 2.12% in 2024. With the consumer price index (CPI) the same numbers come out at 4.73% and 2.59%, because the CPI rose much less in 2023 (3.47% against 6.27%). Whether the slowdown stopped in 2023 or continues depends on the index. For 2024 both give something between 2% and 2.6%.

The companies with any revenue growth were 73.06% in 2022, 64.04% in 2023 and 61.29% in 2024. 37.47% saw their revenue fall.

The older the company, the slower

The 30,496 companies more than ten years old, 43.8% of those I measured, grew their revenue 3.66% in 2024. The GDP deflator rose 3.21% and the CPI 2.74%, so in real terms they grew 0.43% or 0.89%, depending on the index. Companies one and two years old grew 13.29%.

So the overall median depends on how many new companies enter the sample each year. To check this, I kept only the 52,062 companies that existed before 2021 and uploaded all four sets of financial statements. They give 19.66% in 2022, 8.08% in 2023 and 4.47% in 2024. 2024 is 0.93 points below the total.

Revenue growth by sector

Trade, the largest sector with 16,776 companies, grew 3.51%, and manufacturing, with 7,072, grew 3.37%. That is just above inflation, like the old companies. First is water supply with waste, 11.44%, but with only 350 companies. Construction is growing fast for a second year: 11.17% in 2023 and 8.42% in 2024.

Energy fell 4.06% in 2023 and grew 4.90% in 2024. In 2024 it has the highest share of companies that grew, 73.23%.

The industries with the highest and lowest growth

Two-digit activity code (KAD, the Greek extension of NACE) of the main activity, industries with at least 200 companies, 2024:

At the bottom is the manufacture of wearing apparel. Revenue of the median company fell 5.39%, and only 36.20% grew. It was already flat in 2023, at 0.36%. Next to it are four industries of paper and content: paper, publishing, film with music, and printing. All four stayed below inflation in 2024, with both indices.

First is sports and recreation, which includes gyms, with 11.84%. In legal and accounting activities revenue grew 10.08% and 70.38% of the firms grew. In security and investigation services it grew 11.59%, with 72.20% growing.

Revenue goes up, the margin stays the same

The median company added €2,187 of pre-tax profit in 2024 compared with 2023. Its margin, which is profit as a share of revenue, changed by 0.07 points, practically not at all.

19.19% raised revenue and saw profit fall, a little less than one in five. In 2022 it was almost one in four, 25.11%. Accommodation and food service has the highest share in 2024, 24.01%. The level of the margin by industry is in the analysis of profit margin by industry, and the distribution of profits in the analysis of the profits of Greek companies.

Methodology

The data are the financial statements for 2021 to 2024 in GEMI, as read by bizlist.gr, in euros, retrieved on 2 October 2026. For each company with financial statements in two consecutive years, I measured the change in its revenue and took the median of the changes. Change per company, not the difference of two medians: every year more financial statements are uploaded to the registry, and the difference of medians would measure which companies came in.

The first time I measured it, in September, I included companies in their founding year, and the median came out about one point higher. A company founded during the year closes a first financial year of a few months, and the next, full year comes out much larger without real growth. The 4,882 companies founded in 2023 had a median "growth" of 102.28% in 2024. I removed them from all the numbers.

Also excluded are branches of foreign companies, which record the revenue of the parent, and the consolidated financial statements of listed companies, which count the subsidiaries again. Only companies with revenue of at least €5,000 in the first year count: with a threshold of €1 the 2024 change is 5.63%, with €40,000 it is 4.94%, and the order of the years does not change. Real means using the Eurostat GDP deflator (6.29% in 2022, 6.27% in 2023, 3.21% in 2024), which measures prices across the whole economy.

Only companies with revenue in both years count, that is, those still trading. Of those with financial statements in 2023, 5.85% are left out. 1,313 of them have 2024 statements with zero revenue: they stopped selling. Counted as a 100% fall, they bring the 2024 median down from 5.40% to 4.91%. The rest have no 2024 statements or their revenue was not read, and those that closed probably had a fall. Sole proprietorships do not publish financial statements and are missing. The industry is the current two-digit KAD of the main activity, the same for all years of the company.