Quikrete Industry Dashboard for Week 38
The latest, updated version of the Quikrete Industry Dashboard reveals:
• Monthly sales are up from a year ago.
• Housing starts are up.
• Existing home sales are down.
• Wall Street is up, up, up — all 10 ticker symbols tracked on the industry board are in positive territory for the month and the year. And nine out ten are up double-digits for the year.
It was a busy week for hardware and building supply industry statistics.
Total starts for August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.356 million, up 9.6 percent from an anemic 1.237 million in the month of July. Total starts were also up 3.9 percent from a year ago.
Meanwhile the long-anticipated reduction in borrowing rates has come to fruition.
“The loosening monetary policy over the coming months will boost new home building by lowering the construction loan rates for builders,” said Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, The National Association of Home Builders' assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis.
Unadjusted August sales for NAICS 444—building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers—were $42.946 billion, down from $44.079 billion in July, and down from $43.921 billion in the same month a year ago.
Looking across all retail, the National Retail Federation saw signs that consumers continue open their wallets for expenses in and around the home.
“Retail sales data shows that consumers continued to spend on household priorities in August,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said.
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Coming next: The New York-based economic think tank The Conference Board will release the closely watched Consumer Confidence Index on Tuesday, Sept. 24. Currently, the index stands at 103.3 (1985=100).
