JPM | Industrial Spec Sales - Sunday Machinations: Macro, Micro, Meta

Research evidence excerpt

JPM | Industrial Spec Sales - Sunday Machinations: Macro, Micro, Meta

d further warnings after BMW’s

recent pre-announcement while Jose has changed very few forecasts as he has published his previews. For Chemicals and

Building Materials the question is whether Q2 represents a peak or not. The Chemicals sector definitely saw panic buying at

the start of the conflict and that has now ended which leaves us cautious into H2. Speciality Chems (Ingredients mainly) have

seen a significant improvement in sentiment on positive pre-close commentary. Chetan remains concerned that this wil also prove

to be driven by pre-buying even if the Companies don’t believe that it is. His argument is that all other chemical chains saw an

element of pre-buy - and there hasn’t been any significant sign of end market demand for the beauty companies. The issue in

Building Materials is that price rises have gone through - but affordability is one of the elements weighing on new projects so we

find ourselves in something of a vicious cycle - unless there is some relief from rates.

The principal growth driver in Capital Goods remains the DC build out - even if we are seeing the impact of this broadening as

capacity is added and new factories are built. There was a wobble for the segment mid-week when Bloomberg reported that

Meta was considering setting up a cloud business (similar to AWS) which would allow it to rent any excess compute it has

built. The impact was short lived but we do need to keep our eyes open to this risk. It is not my area of expertise - but my

understanding is that Meta’s models are seen as less successful than others. Having excess compute does seem to be a possibility,

therefore.