WASHINGTON — January wholesale inventories saw a 0.8% rise, a slight upward revision from the 0.7% increase in the advance estimate, while wholesale sales saw a 1.1% decrease, data released Friday by the U.S. Commerce Department showed.
Since wholesale inventories saw a 1.1% decline and factory inventories reported a 0.3% gain last Friday, and barring no revision to the 0.8% retail inventories, an MNI calculation expects a 0.6% gain for business inventories, to be released March 14.
With the addition of the 1.1% decline in wholesale sales to the 0.3% decrease for retail trade sales from last month's advanced sales release and the 0.6% increase for factory shipments reported on March 6, an MNI calculation indicates there will be a 0.3% decrease for business sales, barring a large revision to retail trade sales.
Since January wholesale inventories increased, but wholesale sales saw a larger decrease, the inventory/sales ratio jumped to 1.26 from 1.23 in December. Inventories year-over-year is up 4.8%, but sales have boomed in the past year, with a rise of 6.7% from January 2017. The ratio is below the 1.28 mark in January 2017, pointing to a faster sales pace than inventories in the past year.
Excluding the 0.7% rise in the auto category, wholesale inventories would have been up 0.9% in January after a 0.6% increase in December, an MNI calculation showed.
Wholesale sales excluding the 0.5% decline in autos would have been down further to 1.2% in January, following a 0.9% increase in December, with the year-over-year rate still strong at a 7.1% increase.
The value of durable inventories rose by 0.5% in the month, with auto inventories rising 0.7%. The remaining durables components were a mixed bag with mostly gains, but losses seen in lumber, professional equipment, computer equipment, and the miscellaneous durables categories.
Nondurables inventories were up 1.8% in January. The biggest increases were seen in drugs (+4.3%), farm products (+2.8%), and petroleum (+4.1%). The remaining categories were mainly positive, with paper, groceries, and chemicals being the exception, registering negatives in the month.
Durables goods sales were down 1.4% in the month, with auto sales down 0.5%. The remaining categories saw mostly declines, with only professional equipment, computer equipment, and metals posting gains.
January nondurable goods sales were down 0.8% following December's 1.0% gain. Most components were down, with drugs and petroleum sales posting the only gains for the month. Petroleum was up 0.8%, following a 2.4% increase, and up 23.3% year-over-year.
