“We believe the industry benefited in the first quarter from an early Easter. That said, this does not change our expectation that the toy industry will decline in 2024, although at a lesser rate than 2023”
Online
“There’s definitely been shoppers looking for value and they are absolutely spending online. We are certainly still seeing growth in volume…and we’re seeing growth particularly out of China where cross-border [trade] into Australia and China to everywhere else in the world has really grown over the last couple of years” Gary Starr, EGM, Australia Post Parcel, Post & eCommerce Services
“What we found in the U.S. e-commerce market is that, on the one hand, it's the most developed e-commerce market on the planet. On the other hand, it's become the place of the most sophisticated fraud and attack vectors that we see anywhere in the world” Ryan McInerney, CEO, Visa Inc
Geopolitical
“The market for our commodities is often fascinating. But I think at this point in time even more so, given the conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the US election year – gasoline prices are always a very sensitive election issue in the year” Meg O’Neill, CEO, Woodside Energy Ltd
Lithium & Gold
“[The] movement in pricing, the lithium industry has a history of moving sharply in all directions, which could be hard to predict. So, we don't think it's a sound strategy to be playing any sort of stockpiling game for the purpose of trying to realise the benefit, particularly given the disruption that they can cause for our important customers” Dale Henderson, CEO, Pilbara Minerals Ltd
“Looking forward more broadly, Chrysos’ sales opportunity pipeline remains strong, and we expect a buoyant gold price to drive an increased number of samples through our laboratory-based units” Dirk Treasure, CEO, Chrysos Corp Ltd
Paints, Specialty Coatings & D.I.Y
“You've got this post-COVID hangover across the whole [D.I.Y] industry” Timothy Knavish, CEO, PPG Industries Inc [one of the world’s largest paint/coatings companies]
Pallets, Freight & Logistics
“Inventory optimisation continues to weigh on demand from existing customers as retailers and manufacturers use existing inventory to service consumer demand. Excluding this impact, we have started to see modest improvements in like-for-like volume trends in most markets during the third quarter which are starting to be more aligned with underlying consumer demand in each region” Graham Chipchase, CEO, Brambles Ltd
“I feel like there are several factors that are starting to turn. We've been in a long, slow cycle for – going back to April of 2022 and maybe to borrow a line from Taylor Swift, is it over now?” Adam Satterfield, CFO, Old Dominion Freight Line [major international freight company]
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Housing
It’s [our slower sales results] a matter of external timing for customers to sell their homes which remains difficult to forecast” James Kelly, CEO, Lifestyle Communities Ltd
“I think there’s a lot of structural change needed to be made to achieve goals and trying to get more breadth and capacity in the workforce is a critical component of that. These skills are not developed overnight. These people are professionals, and it takes a long time for them to get to a level to deliver a quality home” Brad Duggan, CEO, Metricon Homes
Toys
“We believe the industry benefited in the first quarter from an early Easter. That said, this does not change our expectation that the toy industry will decline in 2024, although at a lesser rate than 2023” Ynon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel Inc
Luxury
“We told you that we were expecting a year of 2 halves, with growth back-end loaded as the start of the year has obviously been far softer than we had anticipated, especially at Gucci. Retail trends were affected by weak in-store traffic across our houses and across main regions apart from Japan” Armelle Poulou, CFO, Kering Group [luxury fashion house conglomerate]
Technology, Power & Batteries
“We need nuclear power plants just to train frontier AI models” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta Inc
“There's going to be a boom and bust in battery cell production, where production exceeds supply and then supply exceeds production and back and forth, so it's like what is true today will not be true in the future. There's going to be somewhat of a boom-and-bust cycle here” Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla Inc
Interest & Deposit Rates
“Deposit rates in Australia have also increased by more than peer economies after accounting for differences in the extent of monetary policy tightening. Around 75 per cent of the change in the cash rate has passed through to outstanding deposit rates in Australia…this is higher than those of other advanced economies, where pass-through ranges from 40 to 70 per cent” Market Statement, Reserve Bank of Australia
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