'Bleak picture': The pandemic is crushing small businesses and their expectations 'have essentially collapsed'

Small businesses across the United States are facing drastic threats to their survival thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Axios reports that new data from the National Federation of Independent Business and investment bank UBS show that small businesses appear to be in dire straits even as big businesses such as Amazon benefit from the collapse of competitors.

A recent survey conducted by NFIB found that "23 percent of small businesses... would be able to operate under current economic conditions for no more than six months," while "another 21 percent said no more than a year."

Holly Wade, NFIB's director of research, tells Axios that the survey data present "a bleak picture."

Separately, UBS global equity strategist Keith Parker tells Axios that a recent survey of small businesses' chief financial officers has found that their expectations for earnings "have essentially collapsed."

Mohamed Kande, the U.S. and global advisory leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, predicts that all of this will result into massive industry mergers with just a few large players left standing.

"What happens when you have changes like that is you start to see a wave of consolidation," he said. "It's hard for small companies to survive because they don’t have the balance sheets, they don’t have the capital to sustain a crisis for a long time."