Muscle Memory and Tactical Moves: CFOs Grow Cautious But Still Expect ’26 to Be Better
Chief financial officers from across the economy have grown more sober, if not altogether downbeat, about the near-term prospects for their companies, several recent surveys show. Not surprisingly, they are as a result trimming their sails when it comes to hiring and spending.
A silver lining: One such poll, by Grant Thornton, showed that a growing number of them are investing in sales and marketing to set up their organizations for a good run at 2026.
The latest quarterly Grant Thornton survey of CFOs shows that the more than 260 respondents have grown less upbeat about their organizations’ chances of meeting their growth goals and supply-chain needs as well as controlling their spending as planned. About 40% of them are confident they can meet growth goals, which is well down from the past two quarters, when that figure was either side of 60%. Additionally, nearly eight out of 10 CFOs said they expect tariffs enacted earlier this year to push up prices while 60% think consumer spending will fall because of the trade measures.
Overall, 46% of finance chief who responded to Grant Thornton said they’re pessimistic about the U.S. economy over the next six months. That tops the survey’s previous recent peak of 38% from the spring of 2022, when the consensus among economy watchers was that a recession would follow the post-COVID spending boom.
Then, leadership teams were dealing with high levels of uncertainty around a pandemic resurgence as well as labor shortages and a rush of inflation. Paul Melville, national managing principal of Grant Thornton’s CFO Advisory Services group, said those experiences and decision processes are serving companies well today; without them, he added, today’s concerns around tariffs and other factors would be more acute.
On top of that, Melville said, what’s different and more manageable for executive teams is that the actual and potential impacts of changes to tariff and tax regimes are more far more quantifiable than those of the coronavirus.
CFOs’ outlooks for their companies’ near-term growth also has retreated: The average forecast for 2025 revenue growth now stands at 5.4% versus 6.8% in late winter and the median planned employment increase has slipped to just 0.8% from 1.1% in the first quarter.
Executive teams also have been trimming spending plans: Among the 500 CFOs who responded to the Duke/Fed poll, fewer than 3% said they’ve canceled capital projects. But 28% said they’ve postponed some capex and about 11% said they’ve indefinitely delayed some spending. Another 26% said they’ve scaled down projects.
And yet, there’s still optimism for what next year will bring. The Duke survey showed that CFOs’ 2026 revenue forecasts haven’t budged; Their average growth estimate now stands at 7.1% (down a tenth of a point from Q1) and their median response has held firm at 5.0%.
On that note, the Grant Thornton report shows that 53% of finance leaders are beefing up their spending on sales and marketing and 51% put customer acquisition and retention among their top three areas of focus. Both of those metrics are up 13 points from the first quarter. Melville said the higher sales spend speaks to a recognition that 2026 isn’t that far away and that “the ramp-up has to start soon” to capture the demand that’s still out there.
Speaking to the broader environment, Melville said not much has changed for executive teams since May, when Grant Thornton researchers wrapped up surveying for the Q2 report. The environment remains uncertain but is a little clearer than in early spring and leaders know they need to keep investing in technological tools such as data analytics and artificial intelligence so they can make smarter decisions. These days, that often means making them more quickly and with shorter time horizons.
“We like to all say we’re strategic but we’re in a much more tactical environment now,” Melville said. “We’ve grown used to the economy more constantly changing so the decisions being made are more tactical now.”
