Listed and unlisted companies
Table 7 compares the characteristics of listed firms in the UK850 with those of unlisted UK companies including foreign-owned firms. The listed companies increased their investment in R&D by 10% compared with the previous year, whereas investment in R&D by the unlisted companies decreased by nearly 3%.
Operating profits expressed as a proportion of sales improved for listed UK-owned companies for the second year in a row from 15.8% in last year’s Scoreboard to 16.5% this year. For unlisted UK-owned companies operating profits expressed as a proportion of sales also improved.
Table 7: Investment in R&D and other measures of business performance across listed and unlisted firms in the UK850 (2007)
UK- and foreign-owned firms
Slightly less than three quarters of the investment in R&D in 2007 by the UK850 (74%) was made by companies which are UK-owned; slightly more than one quarter (26%) was invested by foreign-owned firms. The proportion of foreign-owned companies has followed the upward direction, with 38% of companies under foreign ownership compared with 35% in last year’s Scoreboard.
Over the last year, UK-owned firms increased their investment in R&D whereas foreign-owned firms’ investment in R&D declined, albeit marginally. UK-owned firms also achieved higher levels of profitability and sales growth was faster than foreign-owned firms.
When expressed as a proportion of their operating profits, foreign-owned companies in the UK850, however, spent more on R&D (34%) than UK listed companies, which spent 9% of their operating profits on R&D. Furthermore, foreign-owned companies spent less than the equivalent of 3% of their sales on R&D whilst UK owned companies spent less than 1.5% of their sales revenue on R&D.
