Europe chems buyers’ confidence wanes heading into 2017 – CMCI

LONDON (ICIS)–European chemical buyers’ confidence in both current and future business conditions has increased in the past month, however all other indicators have fallen, analysis of the ICIS Chemical Market Confidence Index (CMCI) showed on Thursday.

(*Forward-looking data for December was for next 12 months, while from January onwards, forward-looking sentiment will be based on the next six months)

While confidence in future business conditions dropped by 16.6 points month on month across the European chemicals industry, buyers bucked the trend as sentiment was up 26.3 points on the previous month.

On the flip side, buyers confidence in current profitability conditions dropped by 16.1 points month on month, the sentiment of the wider chemicals industry in Europe in this regard was a positive one, increasing by 9.0 points.

Buyers’ confidence in future profitability over the next six months was more in line with the general industry with both showing big month-on-month drops.

Confidence in current order-book volumes saw little change in sentiment, dropping by 0.4 points but the future looks bleak with confidence in the next six months dropping by 12.1 points.

The ICIS Europe CMCI aggregates sentiment from hundreds of petrochemical market players actively involved in price negotiations across more than 60 different markets.

The Europe CMCI runs from +100, to -100, with zero on each index representing neutral, or uncertain conditions, a negative score indicating bearish expectations and a positive score representing bullish expectations. The indices also gather sentiment on the comparison between the current situation and the situation across the past 12 months to give a complete picture of current market conditions and confidence. The information is gathered in the third week of each month.  A full methodology is available on request.

For more details on the overall Europe CMCI data, click here