Optimism for January in ECIA Component Sales Sentiment Survey
ATLANTA – Electronics supply chain participants' concerns about December sales were not as pronounced as originally projected, with a component sales sentiment of 98.4 for the month, according to ECIA's Electronic Component Sales Sentiment survey.
The November survey projected an overall index score of 94.4, which would have been the lowest since the prior December. “The actual results measured in the December survey found concerns moderated somewhat with an actual score of 98.4, a steep drop from November but in line with prior months’ results,” explained ECIA Chief Analyst Dale Ford. “The encouraging news comes in the outlook for January 2025 with a forecast leap of 16.8 points up to an overall score of 115.2. The January 2025 outlook is consistent with the optimism for Q1 2025 sales improvement measured in the Quarterly ECST survey conducted in November.”
Passive Components was the only category to top the threshold of 100 in December with a score of 101. The historical pattern for ECST scores changes between December and January shows a significant jump in January following a typically slow December. The average increase between December and January over the prior five years is 14.5. The January outlook from the latest December survey is consistent with the pattern of the previous 5 years, but this jump is not always guaranteed, as the increase in January 2022 was only 2.2 points. In spite of the slow start to 2022, the electronics components industry saw a 20%+ overall growth for the year. This would indicate that while the survey has been a reasonable indicator for near-term sales patterns, it is not a reliable predictor for long-term outcomes.
The strongest outlook for January sales comes in the Electro-Mechanical/Connector segment with a projected score of 125.7, an impressive jump of 27.9 points from December. The score of 110.3 in the January outlook for Semiconductors is simply a recovery back to the level it achieved in November before its December collapse down to 96.6. Passive Components builds on its solid December with an improvement to 109.6 forecast for January.
