CFOs raise their 2026 price forecast to 5.3%, and small firms are twice as likely to be credit-constrained

Finance chiefs expect their own prices to rise 5.3% on average this year, up from 4.7% when they were asked in the spring, according to the third-quarter CFO Survey run by Duke University and the Richmond and Atlanta Federal Reserve banks. They also expect unit costs to rise 4.8% and revenue 7.7%. Their overall optimism about the economy held at 60.3 out of 100.

The survey, released Wednesday, drew answers from 463 to 506 firms, depending on the question, between Aug. 17 and Sept. 4. Monetary policy was their top concern, followed closely by inflation.

The number behind the price forecast

The 5.3% is a revenue-weighted average, so large companies drive it. The median firm expects 4.0%, up from 3.0% in the spring. Either way, the direction is the same: a full point more pricing at the typical company than three months ago, and 2027 expectations also rose, to 4.5% from 4.1% on average.

The survey's economists drew the uncomfortable conclusion themselves in their commentary. Roughly half of firms say their gross margins for 2025 and 2026 are within one percentage point of what they consider normal, and three-quarters are within three points. After five years of cost shocks, that means most firms have been passing costs on "without significant pushback," the authors wrote, and that financial conditions are "not restrictive enough" to slow them. That is an argument for higher rates, not lower ones.

Timing matters too. The survey closed on Sept. 4, before the Fed's rate increase in mid-September and before this week's bond selloff pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to about 5.21% on Friday, CNBC reported. The borrowing costs these CFOs described are already out of date.

What small firms actually said

Only 19% of all respondents said the cost of or access to financing had constrained their investment or spending, down from nearly 30% the last time the question was asked, in the second quarter of 2023. Among companies with fewer than 500 employees, the share was about double that of larger firms, at roughly one in five.

Some coverage has described that group as small firms that "can't cover costs." That is not quite what the data shows. Among constrained firms, more than 60% said the squeeze stopped them from pursuing new business opportunities. Fewer reported trouble paying down debt, covering operating expenses or repairing equipment. The typical constrained small firm is passing on growth, not missing payroll.

Two other findings point the same way. Plans to invest in equipment fell about 8 percentage points from the first quarter, and structures about 2 points. Of firms with no plans to invest, a little over a quarter said they were holding back to preserve cash.

Who this describes, and who it does not

The survey's "small" line is 500 employees, which puts a 12-person HVAC contractor in the same bucket as a 450-person manufacturer. It says nothing separately about the owner-operated end of the market. That end is large: CheckThisBiz lists 7,704,724 independent US businesses, with chains and franchises excluded.

For those owners, the practical read is this. The companies in this survey expect to raise prices by 4% at the median and 5.3% on average this year, so an owner budgeting for flat input costs is budgeting against the data. And the next quarter's survey will be the first to capture the September rate hike and a 10-year yield above 5%, which is where any change in small-firm borrowing should show up.

Related: what consumers' 4.6% inflation expectations mean for three kinds of business and the 10-year Treasury chart.

Sources: The CFO Survey, Q3 2026, data and results and research commentary (Duke Fuqua, Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta); Fortune; CNBC; CheckThisBiz business counts. This is market information, not investment advice.