In its survey of private company CEOs around the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found optimism surprisingly commonplace. PwC’s 19th Annual Global CEO Survey, Private Company View, reveals that 81 percent of private company CEOs expect their companies to increase revenues next year.

The optimistic outlook the survey uncovered, its findings drawn from 848 private company CEOs from 79 companies, is at odds with other findings from the survey. PwC says that 28 percent of private company CEOs expect the overall world economy to improve in the next year, down from 37 percent in 2014. Furthermore, about two-thirds say that there are more threats to their company’s growth this year than three years ago. This is up from last year’s survey, when 58 percent of respondents said the same.

Shawn Panson, PwC's U.S. private company services leader, says, “Private company CEOs recognize that in business, risk has always been the flipside of opportunity.”

PwC pins CEO optimism on the fact that the survey found 58 percent of private companies believe there are more new prospects for growth now than before. Urbanization and data analytics were the most often-cited growth drivers CEOs cited.

Click here to download a full copy of PwC’s 19th Annual Global CEO Survey.