IAPMEI distinguished 65 Azorean companies, from various sectors, with the Excellence SME status, from a universe of 219 companies operating in the Region that were awarded the Leader SME status.

The 2021 awards gala, which celebrated the companies that stood out for their best economic-financial and management performances, took place in Batalha with the presence of the Minister for Economy and the Sea, António Costa Silva.

From the 65 Azorean companies that received the Excellence SME award, 47 are renewals and eight are new members. Compared to the last edition (2020), there are 16 more.
The profile of Azorean companies is mostly small enterprises, with the vast majority (46.15%) concentrated in the Commerce sector, followed by Construction and Real Estate (20%), Tourism (16.92%), Services (7.69%), Industry (4.62%), Transport (3.08%) and Agriculture and Fisheries (1.54%).

The 65 companies together generated a turnover of 149 million euros, a variation of -2.86% regarding the previous year. The biggest contributor was the business fabric of Ponta Delgada, with a turnover of around 52 million euros, while the companies from Povoação had a drop in turnover of around 50%.

Exports rose 23.84%, to a volume of 4.6 million euros, driven by the “winners” of Praia da Vitória, with 4.5 million euros. The combined net result was 13.7 million euros and an EBITDA of 22.6 million euros.

The majority of Excellence SME are located on the island of São Miguel (40) and Terceira (14), followed by Faial (4), Santa Maria (3), Flores and Pico (2 each).

In São Miguel, the city of Ponta Delgada is home to 26 companies with this status, while the remaining are spread across the municipalities of Lagoa (5), Ribeira Grande (4), Povoação (3) and Vila Franca do Campo (2).

The 2021 edition weighed the effects of the pandemic
From the universe of 11,228 companies distinguished with the 2021 Leader SME status, based on their levels of solidity and economic-financial performance, the 3,881 companies now distinguished with the 2021 Excellence SME status are responsible, together, for more than 123,000 jobs.

With regard to this year's calculation, the increase in the number of companies awarded the distinction - 1 016 more - stands out. In 2020 the number of Excellence SME companies represented 28.7% of the universe of Leader SME companies, and in 2021 there is an effective increase in their weight: 34.5%, an increase of 5.73 percentage points compared to the previous year. This evolution results, in part, from the selection criteria defined for this edition, in order to accommodate the impact of the pandemic on the companies' accounts.

With regard to sectoral distribution, Trade, with 1159 (29.9%) companies, and Industry, with 984 companies (25.4%), are the most representative in the Excellence SME universe.
The construction and real estate sector (13.9%), with 541 companies, the Services sector (13.8%), with 536 companies, and the Tourism sector (12.1%), with 468 companies, also stand out.

Most of the 2021 Excellence SME are small businesses. From the 3,881 companies distinguished this year, 72.7% (2,820) are small, 21.4% (832) are medium-sized, and the remaining 5.9% (229) represent the micro-enterprise segment.

The districts with the highest concentration of 2021 Excellence SME are Porto (20.7%), Lisbon (18.9%), Braga (11%) and Aveiro (10%).