The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta publishes a monthly report titled “Business Inflation Expectations” (BIE) that contains statistics from a survey of regional businesses’ views on various factors that impact profitability. These factors include unit costs, unit cost expectations, sales levels, profit margins, and other factors.
As described on the site:
Approximately 300 panelists receive the survey each month. Panelists represent businesses of various sizes headquartered within the Sixth District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and sections of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Panelists range from executives of large corporations to owner-operators of small businesses. The industry composition of the panel roughly reflects the makeup of the national economy. Nevertheless, survey responses are weighted by industry shares of national gross domestic product.
An excerpt from the February 2019 BIE Survey dated February 13, 2019 (involving 218 firms responding):
- Inflation expectations: Firms’ year-ahead inflation expectations decreased somewhat to 1.9 percent, on average.
also:
- Quarterly question: The majority of firms anticipate that over the next 12 months labor costs and nonlabor costs will put “moderate” to “strong” upward pressure on the prices they charge. They anticipate sales levels, margin adjustments, and productivity will have little or no influence on the prices they charge.
- Special question: Firms provided a range of expected price increases regarding the product or service representing the largest share of their sales revenue. The median expected price increase over the next 12 months was 2.7 percent. See the chart in the special question section for the distribution of responses.
The report also includes other questions and a variety of charts and tables depicting respondents’ answers.
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RevSD, LLC offers the above commentary for informational purposes only, and does not necessarily agree with all (or any) of the views expressed by these outside parties.
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ProfitabilityIssues.com is published by RevSD, LLC. RevSD, LLC is a management consulting firm and strategic advisory that focuses on the analysis of current and future business conditions, and given these conditions, offers corporations and businesses advice, strategies, and actionable methods on how to optimally increase revenues and profitability.