The behemoths of the global distribution market have had sticky business quarters.
Arrow Electronics saw revenues fall 6% in the first quarter of its financial year to $4.88bn from $5.22bn in Q3 2011. Its components business sales dropped a hefty 14% to $3.35bn from $3.88bn last year.
Avnet sales in its third quarter fell 5.9% to $6.2bn from $6.67bn last year. Its components business sales declined 4.3% to $3.76bn. EMEA component sales had a brutal quarter, plummeting 17.8% to $1.09bn.
Picking the positives out of gloomy results, both companies reported that the inventory situation was looking more positive. Answering a question on the distributors results conference call, Arrow CEO Mike Long commented, "One of the other things I would call a positive is we are not seeing lead times shorten at this point. We're now seeing products become more readily available if you will. In fact there have been several suppliers that have talked about extending out lead times if the market does not increase its order patterns. I don't see a lot of excess inventory out in the market place today, which does mean that inventory will have to be replaced."
He added, "Right now, all indications, again, positive book to bill, positive design activity."
Harley Feldberg, Corporate Vice President and President of Avnet Electronic Marketing enodrsed this view. "Our view is that from a vantage point it appears that most of the correction that was a result of inventory excess has played through, and one of the data points that we think helps illustrate it is that we have seen a modest - I would have said it is a modest expansion of lead times."
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