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By: Rhona O'Connell, Head of Market Analysis
Supply chain delays, delivery times, chip price hikes and lead-lag with inflation
Supply chain disruptions remain one of the key focus points in economic and commodity analysis. Here we provide a selection of charts that, between them, illustrate how we are still not out of the woods and should shed some light on some of the moving (or not moving as well as they should be) parts.
The Heat Map for Asia shows how the Baltic Dry index has been affected by the crisis in Ukraine, but in general the reduction in freight rates globally is encouraging. Commodity prices are easing marginally but are still uncomfortably high (see the Base Metals Index chart, below) and feeding into input costs. Port throughput (year-on-year changes in shipping container movements in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore) appears to be showing some sign of improvement, but still has plenty of scope for further gains.
Asia Heat Map
Source: Bloomberg
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, supplier delivery times in the United States are well above neutral, with the Institute of Supply Management index currently at 67.2. The index has been above 55 for over two years now and although they have eased, they are still at levels comparable to those in the late 1970s, which was a perfect storm of several stress factors, including the second oil shock, the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis.
The Bloomberg Base Metals index
Source: Bloomberg, StoneX
If we rebase the Bloomberg Base Metals index to 100 at the start of 2019, the profile peaked at 205 in the first week of March this year (obviously distorted to some extent by the problems in the nickel market at that stage); the latest reading is 155.3, a drop of 24% from the top, but still uncomfortably high.
Comparing the delivery delays index with US CPI (an incomplete analysis, but still worth looking at) shows that inflation peaks tend to lag delivery delay peaks by up to a year; if we run the correlation between the deliveries index and CPI with different (six, nine and twelve months), the coefficients work out at 0.15, 0.23 and 0.29 respectively. So the correlation is not rigorous, which is as should be expected given the number of parameters that feed into inflation readings, but nonetheless the profiles show a clear relationship.
The ISM Delivery delay index (bars) and the U.S. CPI
Source: Bloomberg, StoneX
And things are not getting much better in the semiconductor industry. The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Company (SMIC), China’s largest chipmaker, expects an approximate 5% reduction in output with demand for electronics consumer products “dropping like a rock”, and that domestic smartphone shipments from vendors across the country could fall by up to 200 million this year. Other manufacturers are warning of further contractions. In Taiwan, Quanta Computer Inc, a MacBook manufacturer, is expecting April-June notebook shipments to be down by 20% quarter-on-quarter and expects that disruption may not be worked through until the end of the year. The delays are not universal, but they are still significant.
And to top it off, it is reported Taiwan Semimanufacturing Corporation (TSMC), one of the world’s key chip makers with over 60% market share from outsourced chips, has raised its semiconductor prices by between 5% and 8% depending on the process technology and Samsung is reported to be talking to its foundry clients about a possible 20% hike.
The Fed’s Supply Chain Index
Source: Bloomberg
The Fed’s supply chain index may have eased, but there’s a long way to go.
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