Acquis, a leading asset finance insurance provider, has conducted a new survey of 500 SMBs from multiple industries across the U.S. to gauge current sentiment in the market and identify potential growth opportunities. Senior managers within SMBs across the U.S. were asked about their outlook for 2025 and where they see the biggest challenges and opportunities for growth. While two-thirds (65%) of SMBs expressed optimism for the future, one in five (20%) reported feeling pessimistic about their company’s long-term prospects.
The research has also highlighted the regional differences in sentiment - with SMBs in the South expressing highest levels of optimism; in this region, 72% of those surveyed said they were either very or quite optimistic, followed closely by SMBs in the West, where 64% had an optimistic outlook.
Conversely, businesses in the Northeast reported the highest levels of pessimism about the future - 27% claiming they are quite or very pessimistic about the long-term future of their businesses.
The same businesses were asked where they saw their largest growth opportunities. Investing in technology was the perceived largest growth opportunity, with 55% of respondents identifying this in their top three. However, there was some variance of top growth opportunity by industry sector with Building & Construction (53%), and Manufacturing & Production (50%) both rating cost & pricing optimization as their top opportunity.
The research showed that those feeling optimistic about the future of their business see investing in technology as the largest growth opportunity and those feeling pessimistic see cost and pricing optimization as their biggest opportunity for growth.
Craig Ault, Chief Revenue Officer, at Acquis commented: “It’s great to see that two-thirds of SMBs across the US feel positive about their long-term future. These levels of optimism are holding firm from when we asked this same question of SMBs a year ago. It’s good news for our partners in equipment leasing, with the overwhelming majority of SMBs (85%) expressing intention to invest in new business equipment during 2025.”
However, the research highlights a significant opportunity gap for equipment lessors with only one in four SMBs (27%) planning to use leasing to fund investment in new equipment and a surprising 41% intend to use a credit card.
As Ault points out: “With SMBs likely to be facing higher interest rates when using corporate credit cards to finance purchases of essential business equipment, there’s an opportunity for leasing to step in as a more cost-effective way of managing cash flow.”