Sales sentiment for electronics components shows bright optimism for Q1 2025 after the glum expectations for December sales performance according to the ECIA North American sales sentiment survey.
After expressing strong confidence for November sales sentiment in all component categories, survey participants projected equally strong pessimism for the December outlook. Fortunately, the glum expectations for December sales performance are overshadowed by the bright optimism for Q1 2025 sales sentiment.
The drop in the score for the Electro-Mechanical/Connector segment December outlook still leaves it slightly ahead of the October actual results. On the other hand, the drop in the sales sentiment outlook for December for all other categories plummets to the lowest level since the December 2023 to February 2024 time period.
A tough way to end the year! The highly encouraging news comes from the Q4 ECST survey and the Q1 2025 outlook. The Q1 outlook calls for expectations of sales growth to jump by 15% to 27% between Q4 and Q1 while expectations for declining sales fall by 8% to 15%. The overall average Q1 projection for all categories shows 46% of participants expecting sales growth while those seeing a decline drops to only 7%. Those reporting neutral expectation come in at 47%.
Those reporting expectations of declining sales in Q1 only see sales falling by -1% to -3%. By contrast, 15% of participants report expectations for +3% to +5% growth and 4% of participants project over +5% growth. Looking over the past year the ECST survey results show the second half was a very challenging sales environment for electronic components channel participants. But there are strong expectations for a much brighter tomorrow starting in Q1 2025.