After a week when AVIXA Market Intelligence’s COVID-19 Impact Survey indicated a plateau in business sentiment, the organization is now seeing hints that companies are eyeing a positive turn.
This week, the percentage of AV providers and AV end users indicating that the pandemic has negatively impacted their company’s business declined to 71 percent and 64 percent, respectively, down from 79 percent and 67 percent last week. Significantly, it was a comparatively calm week for some AV providers, with 27 percent reporting no impact from the virus pandemic, up from just 19 percent saying the same the survey before.
Drilling down into the responses of professionals who say they’ve avoided negative impacts for the week, an increasing share can discern positive developments. Asked for the good news, 35 percent of AV providers that hadn’t seen a negative impact last week—including 57 percent of such providers outside North America—indicated they’ve seen projects resuming. Along those lines, 30 percent of such AV providers—including 61 percent outside North America—said they’d seen an increase in incoming business inquiries.
End users reported similar experiences. There was a smaller number indicating no negative effects for the week, but among those, 28 percent said they’d seen projects resume.
As we reach something of a pause in the chaos, AVIXA Market Intelligence asked directly about the operating condition of companies:
- 16 percent of AV providers and 16 percent of end users said their companies were operating at full capacity.
- 68 percent of AV providers and 71 percent of end users indicated operating at reduced capacity.
- 13 percent of AV providers and 7 percent of end users said their companies temporarily ceased all operations.
- Only 1 percent of AV providers and no end users indicated they permanently shut down.
Of course, there are still many facing extreme challenges, including 54 percent of AV providers reporting delayed orders—up from 50 percent from last week—and 49 percent reporting canceled projects—up from 44 percent. Or the 25 percent of respondents outside North America seeing revenue declines of 91 percent to 100 percent—a share of respondents up from 21 percent last week. Statistically speaking, those increases may be meaningless, based on the weighting of data and declining shares of respondents reporting negative impacts overall. But the underlying impressions they communicate continue to reflect a struggling AV market.
With the calendar turning to May, a growing share of AV providers (20 percent) now thinks July will be the month when project work turns around, while 25 percent still think the turnaround starts in June. End user respondents are pushing out their horizon more significantly, with greater shares predicting a return to projects in August and September (16 percent and 19 percent, respectively), and a full 11 percent of end users now looking ahead to 2021. Such estimates may affect AV providers as they try to create a fresh path toward future work.
The next survey results will be available on May 8. For full details from this week’s survey, click here.
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