Top industry executives set aside their holiday shopping when the Disti Blog questions landed on their desks so we can all learn about their views on just how bad it was in 2009 and whether there are any portents for fairer climes in 2010. I'll keep these on top of the posts right through the holiday until the New Year so you can dip in and out if you don't fancy reading them all in one go. Here Mark Larson, President and COO of Digi-Key responds.
Mark Larson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Digi-Key
Review 2009 for us. As awful as it looked or not as bad as painted?
Sales in early 2009 were sharply depressed, down 20%+ to comparable months in 2008. But in the June-July timeframe sales began growing and continue to gain momentum and in the last several months have really caught fire. We expect the last quarter of calendar 2009 (Oct-Dec) to show a sales increase of 23% or more over the same quarter in 2008. We have broken many sales records these past several months. These strong sales will help offset the feeble results earlier in the year. We anticipate our sales for the full calendar year to be down about 6%.
How do you view prospects for 2010? Do you foresee any hurdles to the potential growth next year e.g. a double dip recession, lengthening lead times
At this point we are viewing prospects for 2010 quite optimistically. We do believe that lengthening lead times that in some cases translate into de facto allocation may have a dampening effect on sales growth, but that sales in 2010 could easily run 10% more than 2009.
What would make life easier in 2010?
There is little question that the recession will not really end until unemployment returns to more acceptable levels. So the sooner this happens, the better. The second major hurdle is long lead-times. As the manufacturers gain confidence in the recovery this situation should normalize. The resolution of these two issues would definitely make life easier.
What will make 2010 exciting for your company?
Even during this economic downturn Digi-Key continued to aggressively grow customer base around the world. We believe that design activity continued unabated, and may have actually accelerated over the past 15-months. The opportunity to support these new as well as existing customers as they bring their designs to market---the potential of supplying components for their prototype runs and ultimately supporting their full run production---this definitely gets the adrenalin running.
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