A Case for Cautious Optimism

The recovery of the precision machined products industry is obvious in our latest PMPA Business Trends Report.

16 point gap between 3 month and 12 month moving average for sales!

We have been calling our new level of sales “The New Normal.” While we have lost a decade in terms of sales volume, we are at sustainable levels of sales because of the lessons and adjustments that we made over the decade. The 16+ point gap between the 3 month moving average (97.3) and 12 month moving average (81) for sales makes a case for cautious optimism.

(OK, perhaps I am understating this a bit!)

Sales Index: down just 5 points to 100 from March 2010 value of 105.

Average Length of First Shift: 42.5 hours for April, compared to 38.1 for CY 2009. only 3 % of respondents report less than 40 hours.

Sentiment for the next three months:

Sales: 88% of respondents say Same or better.

Lead Times: 93% of respondents say same or longer. Shops are getting busy.

Employment: 99% of those reporting expect employment in their shop to remain the same or increase.

Profitability: 88% expect profitability to remain the same or improve over the next three months.

You can read the full report here: PMPA APRIL DATA.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Front Office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.