BDO: Factory shipments to rise 3% to 4% in 2003
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, January 5, 2003
High Point — U.S. residential furniture factory shipments should grow 3% to 4% this year, with most of the gain in the second half, BDO Seidman predicts.
The accounting and consulting firm's latest forecast is a little more optimistic than the one the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn. released in December, which called for a 2.4% gain in shipments for 2003.
BDO said its economic model indicates the first half should be "up slightly" over the first half of 2002, but the second half should bring increases of 5% to 6% from a year earlier. Still, the gains won't quite bring the industry back to where it was before a 10% decline in shipments in 2001.
"If our forecast is right, shipments of U.S. manufacturers would reach a level just slightly ahead of levels in 1999," Ken Smith, national director of BDO's Furniture Industry Services, said in the firm's monthly Furniture Insights newsletter.
An improvement in consumer confidence would be needed for the economy, and the industry, to pick up substantially, Smith said. This probably would require stability in the stock market, an improved employment picture and a resolution of the Iraq situation, he added.
Meanwhile, BDO's monthly survey of industry activity brought positive news for October, when factory orders and shipments were both up 11% from the same month a year ago. The comparison is against a particularly weak month of 2001, when orders and shipments in the wake of the September terrorist attacks were down 16% from 2000.
For the first 10 months of 2002, orders were up 5% from the 2001 pace and shipments were up 3%.
| Factory orders, shipments in Oct. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| In billions of dollars | |||
| Change from | |||
| Sept '02 | Oct '01 | ||
|
Source: BDO Seidman
|
|||
| Orders | $2.112 | 2% | 11% |
| Shipments | 2.230 | 1% | 11% |
| Order backlog | 1.958 | 1% | 11% |
| January-October | >Change from 2001 | ||
| Orders | $20.719 | 5% | |
| Shipments | 21.084 | 3% | |
-
Factory orders up 4% in Jan.
Apr 12, 2010 -
June factory orders down 16% from '08
Sep 7, 2009 -
May factory orders down 17%
Aug 24, 2009 -
Factory orders stop slide
Jan 4, 2010 -
Factory orders fall 10%
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