PMPA Business Trends August 2020
The PMPA Business Trends Sales index inched up to 119, up 1.7% over July. While this small increase might be seen as a negative, the greater picture is that this 119 value is a 42% increase in sales over the low point for the year ( April 2020-just four months ago) obviously positive. While the pace of improvement is slowing, we continue to outperform the Fed’s measures for IP and Manufacturing. We believe that this is because our customers still are maintaining very low inventories for components. Low levels of component inventory at our customers, leads to urgent needs and orders for our parts as demand improves.. All sentiment indicators are strongly positive for the fourth consecutive month. Our outlook remains positive, as our industry sales outpace those of the Fed indicators as the economy continues to recover.