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Comparability

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Business Dynamics, Business Statistics
Kalle Emil Holst Hansen
+45 39 17 35 65

khs@dst.dk

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High Growth Enterprises

The statistics can not be directly compared to the statistics of Gazelles published by Eurostat, see the paragraph '7.01 International sammenlignelighed' for further explanation. The statistics are based on the real new enterprises from the business demography statistics. There have not been changes in methods since the beginning of the series.

Comparability - geographical

The statistics can be compared with the statistics of Gazelles published annually by Eurostat, however, with few exceptions described below.

The definition of new high-growth companies partly follow the OECD and Eurostat definition, see "Eurostat OECD Manual on Business Demography Statistics, 2007 Edition", which defines new high-growth companies (Gazelles) as all new enterprises that are up to five years old, that has 10 or more employees at the start of the growing period and have an average annual growth of more than 72.8 per cent. (20 per cent. Per year) over a three year period.

The Danish statistics differ, however, on the point that the cut-off limit of 10 or more employees at the beginning of growth period is changed to 5 or more employees. This is done as it is estimated that a size-limit of 10 does not apply to a Danish Business structure. The limit of at least five employees are set to avoid small companies with high percentage growth, but with little absolute growth, are categorized as growth entrepreneur.

The Danish statistic uses the variable Full time equivalent (FTE) as the base for calculating growth and for the cut-off threshold. This stands in contrast to the Danish data delivered to and published by Eurostat where the variable Number of employees is used for calculating growth and for the cut-off threshold.

Comparability over time

The statistics has been published since the growth period 2004:2007 with the same methods.

With the publication of the High growth enterprises for the year 2018 the reference year 2017 was republished. This was due to quality-enhanced data processing, which resulted in an otherwise uncommon revision of Accounts Statistics for Non-Agricultural Private Sector, General enterprise statistics and the Business demography. Republishing High growth enterprises ensures that these are consistent. The revision carries only minor alterations to the reference year 2017.

Coherence - cross domain

The statistics Gazelles is based on the population of enterprise births published in the Business demography. Business Demography data are also published by Eurostat, including gazelles.

Coherence - internal

Not relevant