AVIXA has published its Pro AV Business Index for July, which now incorporates questions from the organization’s weekly COVID-19 Impact Survey that ran from March until the end of June. This month’s report shows commercial AV sales are growing for the first time since February. In July, the AV Sales Index reached 53.7, indicating growth for the first time since February. This represents an increase of 3.4 points from June, when the index’s 50.3 mark suggested no net change. There’s still a long road ahead, as this month’s figure represents only slow growth. But the operative word is “growth,” and all signs point to it continuing.
The top finding from the additional questions from the COVID-19 Impact Survey is that panelists report a year-to-date revenue decline of 20.8 percent versus the same period for the previous year. Staffing was steadier, dropping 9 percent. Despite these big declines, providers show optimism for recovery, with a clear majority anticipating revenues to get back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021, right in line with our Industry Outlooks and Trends Analysis (IOTA) projections.
Second-quarter GDP numbers came out for key markets, revealing the steep economic toll our world has paid so far this year. The EU statistical office reported that the eurozone second-quarter GDP dropped 12.1 percent from its first-quarter figure, which was already down 3.6 percent from the end of 2019. US numbers released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed an even worse situation, with a second-quarter drop of 32.9 percent on the back of a 5 percent first-quarter drop. The silver lining of these figures is that they roughly matched expectations. Economists and business leaders knew such massive declines were coming, so measures like equity markets did not significantly change in response to the news.
As with the AVI-S, the AV employment index (AVI-E) also turned back into growth territory in July. The index increased 3.1 points from 48.1 to 51.2. To be clear, 51.2 is so close to the no-net change mark that it’s more a sign of steady payrolls than growth, but it is still encouraging. Comparing our international respondents to our North American respondents shows that this increase was driven largely by US growth. Shifting attention to the broader US economy, payrolls added 1.8 million workers—fully 500,000 of them at restaurants and bars—as the unemployment rate dropped to 10.2 percent. As a single snapshot, these numbers are a good sign. Context makes them look less positive though, as payroll growth shows clear signs of deceleration. Job growth in June was more than twice as fast as it was in July and initial unemployment claims have steadied at over 1 million per week—well above the pre-pandemic record.
To read the full report from AVIXA, click here.
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