 Welcome to the PMMI webinar for the Second Quarter Quarterly Economic Outlook report with Chris Steele from ITR Economics. Chris is an economist at ITR and he provides economic consulting services with a great deal of insight and action-oriented advice for small businesses, trade associations and Fortune 500 companies. Chris also has brought in-depth insights of industry trends to the ITR Economics team with his willingness to go above and beyond in his daily research for our clients. Chris graduated from UMass Amherst with a BA in Economics and served six years in the National Guard. His attention to detail, ability to understand the client's specific needs and organizational skills create an enjoyable partnership with each of his clients. Today, Chris will interpret the information included in the Quarterly Outlook and provide insight on how today's economy may be affecting your packaging and processing operations. If you have any questions that you would like to ask Chris, please type your question in the chat box that is located in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. At the end of the presentation, which will last approximately 30 to 40 minutes, he will answer your questions. At this point, I would like to hand the webinar over to us with ITR Economics. Hi, Rebecca and everyone else, thank you for joining us for this month's Quarterly Economic Outlook. Now before I get started, Rebecca, I'm afraid of experiencing just one last technical curve. Are you able to see my screen right now as I have it up? I am not. So, now I am. We're not able to see it either. Yeah, mine just came up. It is good for everyone to be on just the title screen here. I think we're good. It seemed like there was just a slight lag. Again, so Rebecca, thank you. And thank you everyone for bearing with us while we work through those little bugs. And again, welcome to this month's Market Forkast webinar. Looking back on 2016, it was definitely an exciting year. The conference has been muted. The conference has been muted. The conference has been unmuted. We moved into a regime change in the White House that, again, was exciting but oftentimes uncertain. So, as we're going through today's webinar, first off, I'd like to take a look back at 2016. We are going to go over ITR's expectations for the macroeconomy as a whole and see how they played out. And then we're going to move into what we're seeing right now on the national economy at the most— The conference has been muted. Our terminology and methodology. This is mostly for those of you who have not been here for any of our previous webinars or are maybe a little unfamiliar with ITR's industry-specific terminology and methodology. Basically, I just want to make sure that we're all speaking the same language, that there's no confusion or uncertainty when I discuss certain metrics. To start off, we're going to talk about the two main metrics we use here at ITR for describing certain segments of the economy. Those are data trends and our rates of change. Our data trends are simply our moving totals or our moving averages. We use both quarterly moving totals and annual moving totals. So, what that means is essentially the most recent three months and 12 months of data summed up respectively. We use these moving totals to sum up things that are logically easy to add together. For example, sales or dollars or shipments or units. However, with some metrics, it doesn't necessarily make sense to add them together. In that case, we use moving averages. Again, that's going to be the most recent either three months or 12 months of data averaged together. We use moving averages when we look at certain things such as production indices or price levels, which again, aren't logically consistent when you add them up. We also have our rates of change analogs to our three months and 12 month moving totals or averages. We call these our 312s or 1212s, also our quarterly growth rates or annual growth rates. Just like we had the most recent three months or 12 months of data added up, our 312 is the most recent three months of data compared to the same three months one year prior, hence the quarterly growth rate. The 1212 is, again, simply the most recent 12 months of data compared to the year before that. Our annual growth rate or annual rate of change. 312s and 1212s are our primary metrics we use when we're looking at where either a certain company or aspect of the economy is within the overall business cycle. But before we get to that, I would like to define how ITR considers the business cycle. We have four main phases. You'll see this in the bottom of my screen with that four-colored sign curve. In the bottom left hand quadrant of that box, we have in blue phase A recovery. Phase A recovery is essentially the first sign of hope within an economy or an industry. I like to consider it the light at the end of the tunnel phase of the business cycle. The annual growth rate is still negative, so your sales or your metric is still below the year ago level. However, that 1212 is moving up toward the zero line. So on a month-to-month basis, things are becoming progressively less worse. You'll hear us say that the pace of decline is lessening or softening. Once that 1212 rises up and passes the zero line, we transition to phase B, accelerating growth of the business cycle. Phase B is where we want to be all the time. It is the best phase of the business cycle. And again, that is when the 1212 is above zero. So we are above the year ago level and it is rising higher and higher on a month-to-month basis. So the pace of growth or the pace of rise is accelerating on a month-to-month basis. Once that 1212 hits a peak and begins at a climb, which we call a cyclical peak or a business cycle high, we transition into the upper right-hand quadrant, that yellow portion of the sign curve, into phase C, slower growth. Phase C slower growth is our cautionary phase of the business cycle. Things are still good. It's still in an inflationary environment. Sales are rising on a year-over-year basis. You're doing progressively better than you were one year prior. However, that 1212 is declining, meaning that on a month-to-month basis, the rate of growth is beginning to slow. Once that 1212 then falls below the zero line, we fall into phase D, recession. This is when, again, the 1212 or annual growth rate is below year-go levels and the rate of decline is accelerating on a monthly basis. So things are becoming progressively worse and worse. Obviously, as I'm sure you all know, phase D recession is the worst phase of the business cycle where you don't want your company or your industry to find itself. This is an idealized theoretical version of the business cycle. And it's important to note that on any year-to-year basis, we don't always see all four phases of the business cycle in this nice, neat order. Ideally, we'll see what we consider a soft landing. This is where in that phase C slower growth trend, our 1212 is declining and we're starting to become a little cautious, a little worried some about falling into phase D recession. However, it reaches a cyclical low or a business cycle low before crossing that zero line and transitions directly back to phase B, accelerating growth. This is generally during times of significant advancement, technological advancement within a portion of the economy or just a time of general macroeconomic rise. Conversely, we also have a hard landing. Again, this is the situation you don't want to find yourself in. This is when you're in phase A recovery of the business cycle down on the bottom left. Your 1212 is below zero but rising and you're starting to see that light at the end of the tunnel as I like to consider it. However, you reach a business cycle high before transitioning to that phase B accelerating growth trend and go directly from phase A to phase D recession. Industries generally find themselves during times of stagnation or competition from burgeoning industries or also during times of macroeconomic recession. Imagine you're 2001, 2002, after the tech bubble burst, or most recently in the wake of the great financial crisis. These slides will all be made available to you in the wake of our discussion today. I urge you, if you have any questions about anything that ITR is reporting on or anything that I went over today, please, I really do urge you to come back and look at this slide. It's a good little primer on how we here at ITR Economics both quantify and think about the economy as well as talk about it. The term you'll hear as used here very often is leading indicator. We'll talk about how employment is a leading indicator for the economy overall or something to that nature. What we mean by a leading indicator is a certain series of the economy or a certain indicator or survey that tends to react to changes in the fabric of the economy before you see that in the overall debt. Here you can see we have two 1212 annual growth rates of an idealized company, company A in that light blue cyan color and just a generic made up leading indicator in that dark blue color. If you look here, you can see how those business cycle troughs and peaks tend to occur to the left of the graph beforehand temporally than they do for that company. When we see this, we see that it can be used as a leading indicator by shifting it over to the right. Now, there's not a visual that's playing right now, but it's very easy to see is that when this happens on a consistent basis, you can take that blue leading indicator and shift it rightward. What this does is it lets the tip of the most recent data extend into the future and essentially give us some nice predictive powers. We here at ITR Economics as a business cycle consulting firm rely heavily on leading indicators and they are a cornerstone of our proprietary forecasting methodology. However, as much faith as we put in them, it is important to stress that you should never be looking at one single leading indicator and making decisions based off of that leading indicator. No matter how tight the cyclical relationship historically has been and how strong of an indicator it has been, the economy is fluid and ever changing and all of you know that. Because of this, we can see what we consider false signals in a leading indicator where a leading indicator either turns up or turns down without a resulting corresponding increase in either your company or industry sales. To avoid this, we look at a basket of five to seven leading indicators for every segment of the economy that we're interested in. You can do this with your own company as well. Once you see the majority of these five to seven, so three, four, five leading indicators, all making cyclical turns in unison, that is a statistically significant indicator that your company or the segment of the economy that you're interested in is going to make that turn as well. You'll hear me talk a lot more about leading indicators as we get further into the report. Before we get there, we look back at 2016. Again, definitely there were some pain points, especially if you're heavily tied to either the mining or industrial sectors of the U.S. economy as we saw the oil and commodity price crash and the subsequent downturn activity. So I wanted to look at our expectations for the U.S. economy as of 2016 and now that we have data closing out the entirety of the year, see how we did four to five quarters out. As every economist and every economic forecasting firm will tell you there are years where you get it and years where you don't. That's simply the nature of the game when it comes to forecasting and projecting into the future. I'm very proud to say and very excited to say for the rest of my talk today that 2016 was a year where we got it. Here you see eight of the most widely tracked macroeconomic indicators, U.S. gross domestic product, U.S. industrial production, China industrial production, retail sales, housing employment. These are all benchmark series that you're all very familiar with I'm sure that show off in the mainstream media they're espoused in political circles and they're mentioned on a day-to-day basis when we think about the direction of the economy as a whole. You can see their accuracy rating was in the high 90 percentiles for all of these largest indicators. What this tells me is that what I was telling you last quarter and two quarters ago and we were looking at even three quarters ago in early 2016 essentially still stands. The first year of her long-term outlook came into play just as we expected it to. And I want you to keep that in mind as another little piece of evidence that our long-term outlook remains valid. However, I would never ask you to rely just on our historical accuracy in order to look into the future and that's where I look forward into really digging into the most recent leading indicator evidence today. I want to look at one of some of the benchmark indicators are saying. We're going to step back away from a lot of the political uncertainty and economic policy discussion that has been going on and look solely at the data and see what that's telling us. And I think it's going to be very reassuring and I look forward to moving forward with that. We'll look at the U.S. economy as a whole. Here we have U.S. gross domestic product. Gross domestic product or just GDP for short is one of the most widely touted indicators for the health of an overall economy because it attempts to capture the entirety of production or the entirety of economic exchange within an economy. Here you can see that the 312, the quarterly growth rate which is what we look at when we look at GDP growth is positive and has reached a business cycle low in 2016 and transitions that nice phase B accelerating growth trend. We expect this accelerating growth trend to rise or persist through 2017 finishing up in the 3% range. Then you'll see that it turns a corner rather sharply in 2018. This is a key part of our current long-term outlook. We do expect to transition to phase C slower growth for the overall U.S. economy in 2018 and you'll see that 2012 decline. However it's important to note that phase C slower growth is still general positivity. You'll still be feeling some nice economic tailwind during that time. It's not until 2019 that we expect the U.S. economy to fall into its next economic recession. If you've been following along with our outlook here at ITR Economics or any of the PMMI webinars in the past quarters this will not be new information to you but it is still very much something that we're both tracking and expecting. The U.S. consumer has really been the driver of economic growth over the past year. As I mentioned we saw a lot of industrial headwinds low prices which were discouraging heavy equipment purchases as well as historic plummet and most commodity prices especially those tied to industry and energy. However you can see that despite the U.S. industrial economy feeling some significant pain, gross domestic product the U.S. economy as a whole managed to actually avoid recession and have one of those nice soft landings. That's because U.S. personal consumption drives nearly two thirds of overall GDP. U.S. sales have been up in the high 1% to low 2% range while adjusting for inflation over the past year or so which is a very strong indicator that the U.S. consumer is healthy we're making more money, we're spending more money and that's what's driving that growth. We've also seen some fairly strong activity in the housing market, again another important leading economic indicator and that's what's going to continue to drive that accelerating growth trend that we're seeing throughout 2017 and into 2018. The decline in 2019 is going to be primarily consumer driven once again, so the consumer is bringing the U.S. economy on the up right now, but it will also lead to us falling into recession in late 2019. We expect to see higher interest rates, some slowing consumption and after a significant period of rise also a slowdown in the housing market. Now I don't want any of you to panic I know you hear that kind of capital R recession and you think back eight or nine years now to the wake of the great financial crisis and really the shock waves that were felt throughout the U.S. economy and the global economy indeed, this is going to be nothing like that. It's going to be a low single digit year over year decline more of a slowdown than it is going to be a true recession like we're used to in the past decade or so. Now this brings us, as I mentioned before U.S. industrial production because for a lot of you that nice soft landing, that period of general sustained rise in the U.S. economy might sound a little surprising because I'm sure some of you with ties to the industrial economy are still feeling a significant amount of pain and the environment might still feel recessionary for you. The reason I'd like to look at U.S. industrial production is because this is here in ITR and in many forecasting firms one of our major benchmarks for the overall economy as opposed to just GDP. U.S. industrial production comprises three main components the mining sector public utilities and then also manufacturing. Of those three sectors manufacturing is the sole sector that's expanding on a year over year basis. It managed to avoid recession falling just about even with the year prior so no significant growth or anything to cheer about right now but definitely a sign of at least relative positivity within the U.S. industrial economy. Again mining and utilities were bolted down significantly in the face of low commodity prices and just generally depressed demand globally and especially from some of the world's emerging markets. Imagine your Brazil's, your China's, your China's. However if you look at this 1212 rate of change for U.S. industrial production you can see it here in the dark blue line it has turned that corner. When I spoke to you three months ago now if you remember we were talking about a tentative phase A transition U.S. industrial production had just begun to turn that corner it had barely started to turn up but the leading indicator evidence was saying that it would turn up and now I'm glad to be here before you one quarter later with a significant statistically important period of 1212 rise since the fourth quarter of 2016. Again U.S. industrial production is still down on a year over year basis it's receding at about 0.7 percent year over year but the 312 rate of change or the quarterly growth rate is rapidly approaching that phase B year over year growth accelerating growth trend. You'll see in orange I also have another indicator here this is the ITR leading indicator if any of you are ITR trends report subscribers you can follow the activity of the ITR leading indicator on a month to month basis when you look at your own basket of leading indicators and assess where your company is within the business cycle. The ITR leading indicator generally leads U.S. industrial production by about six to nine months so anything we see happen in the ITR leading indicator we generally expect to see happen within U.S. industrial production about six to nine months later. Again there's a graphic that's not playing here so a small technical glitch I apologize for that but I want you to visually in your mind take that orange line and shift it to the right it's about six to nine months and you can see that all of those cyclical trunks begin to line up very well and the rise that we're seeing in that orange line in our proprietary leading indicator is extending throughout the majority of 2017. This is a strong supporting indicator for our current macroeconomic outlook because it supports that expectation of persistently stronger growth on a month to month and quarter to quarter basis for at least the next four to five quarters so widely watched economic indicator within the news and the media but I'm sure many of you have heard of is the purchasing managers index. The purchasing managers index is a survey that is sent out to around I believe 300 of the nation's manufacturers throughout various portions of the economy and it asks them a battery of questions concerning current market conditions. The reason that I as well as so many of my fellow colleagues like the purchasing managers index as a leading indicator is because it isn't based on expectation. It isn't based on what anyone thinks. It is based on what these different purchasing executives are experiencing at the time of the survey. It looks at various different metrics like production levels, new orders inventories in the current employment situation. You can see that the purchasing managers index is currently up 16.1 percent compared to the same month last year and this is actually the fastest pace of rise for the PMI since the recovery of the 2008 recession. So this is a very significant leading indicator and it serves primarily in the industrial side of things. However it helps inform our expectations for the economy as a whole. So that same nascent rise we're seeing in US industrial production is once again corroborated by a very strong leading indicator. Just another piece of evidence we can put in our pocket when we ask ourselves do I trust this outlook? Am I willing to act on this outlook? Here again we have US industrial production in the dark blue line next to another leading indicator in the US total industry capacity utilization rate. A little bit of a mouthful but all this is essentially the percentage of our total machinery and manufacturing capacity that is being used at a given time. It's currently just wavering around the zero line so we're just about back up to where we were last year on a cyclical basis. However you can see as we look back through the past two recessions that the trajectory of this orange line mirrors almost exactly the trajectory of the US industrial production annual growth rate coming out of that recession. Again the situation is no different here and we can see that that orange line is beginning to rise fairly significantly and our expectations for US industrial production are mirroring it. Again more evidence that our outlook is sound at this point and that the current increase we're seeing in US industrial production isn't just a blip on the radar or a quirk of economics but in fact a sustainable business cycle trend. The US total industry capacity utilization rate is especially important to look at because there are two different stories going on with it. First off it is a reactive indicator. When industrial production or just the industrial economy in general begins to turn up and demand begins to rise obviously that puts more strain on equipment we respond by turning on more machines by using more of what we have but also at the same time there's a causal factor here as it responds to that demand and utilization rates rise we start to put more strain and more wear and tear on our machines they don't have as much downtime so they also have less time for preventative maintenance and repair what this leads to is a higher turnover rate in our capital equipment think our heavy industry which also drives further industrial demand as people try and either expand their capacity in order to meet demand and account for a loss of their equipment so it has that kind of dual demand and supply push which makes it historically as you can see a very accurate leading indicator for again the US economy as a whole but also US industrial production so clearly we've looked at the the non-industry parts the leading indicator evidence for whether or not this trend is sustainable and based on a handful of our most powerful leading indicators all signs are saying that it is that brings us to US non-defense capital goods new orders again this is a segment of the economy that's easier to understand than it is to pronounce non-defense capital goods new orders is simply our metric for business investment for capital investment imagine everything from printers to computers to engines to turbines to any large piece of textile or mill equipment basically capital goods are any goods that are used in the production of goods but not used up themselves so it excludes things such as raw iron and steel or fuel capital goods new orders is again a widely watched segment of the economy and it also has been a point of significant pain for a lot of producers over the past year and a half when we saw oil prices and metal prices fall we entered nearly a inflationary environment where prices were falling rapidly and so there were these downward pricing pressures on a lot of large heavy equipment where producers were being forced via competitive pressures to reduce their prices in order to maintain their market share and what this did is it really squeezed their profit margins and we saw corporate profits decline fairly significantly in this environment those purchasing managers that I was talking about earlier were very hesitant to invest in any large machinery or expensive pieces of capital goods because the return on investment was simply slim if not non-existent and didn't seem to be getting any better as you can see instead of reaching a nice V-shaped trough and falling into recession and immediately recovering we hovered in that negative 3, negative 4, negative 5% year over year decline really for the better part of two years again last quarter if you were here for my economic webinar you heard that again we had seen a tentative rise that certain indicators were beginning to look up and the growth rates were beginning to recover three months later I have more good news for you capital goods has transitioned definitively and statistically significantly to phase a recovery now it might be a little hard for some of you to see here because of our forecast lines however if you look at the light gray line that has been oscillating around the dark blue line that is our capital goods new orders quarterly rate of change the reason we like to look at quarterly rates of change is because they are more reactive to immediate changes in the economy than the 1212 or the annual growth rate the annual growth rate is a more long term outlook where the quarterly growth rate is more short term and you can actually see that it has transitioned above that zero line into phase B accelerating growth and is expanding on a year over year basis so when I mentioned that many of you may still think well if there is so much positivity if we are seeing so much cyclical rise in the indicators why do I still feel like we are in a recession well that was because of the slow nature of our recovery but that is diminishing rapidly and especially moving through the first half of 2017 I imagine that the majority of those pressures for most industries will have almost completely diminished again one of the characteristic economic factors of 2016 was that rapid declining commodity prices we saw it in agricultural commodity prices when it came to corn, wheat and soy we saw it with what I have on my screen here zake, steel, tin, lead, copper aluminum chances are you could throw almost any metal on this chart right here and see that very similar trend of the 2015-2016 recessionary period and again if you have opened the Wall Street Journal of the New York Times or Bloomberg News even once in the last year you know all about the precipitous decline in oil prices however as quickly as commodity prices tended to fall in 2015 and 2016 they have reacted very well to supply cuts and that nascent rise both in US and global industrial demand you can see here that on a quarterly basis all six of these benchmark metals are accelerating they are up on a year over year basis and prices are rising to much more favorable levels that is one of the key drivers behind growth in 2017 is those higher price points the producers are going to be able to demand for their goods as their input costs rise which is handled well will help to really pad their margins and make up for some of the the red ink on their books from the previous year next we have US private sector employment before I even talk about employment I want to just have you look at a general trend that we've seen over the past 10 or 12 slides again as an economist looking at trends are my job ultimately but it does not take an economist to pull out the overall trend that we've seen over the past slide and that is one of rise we've seen almost everyone if not every one of these indicators and segments of the economy moving up towards that top right hand quadrant where we want them to be and again that is really going to characterize 2017 into most of 2018 as well moving back to private sector employment you can see that we have exceeded the 2008 private sector employment level that is a very big benchmark because it took us a significant period of time to recover from that recession but despite that the labor market has tightened you can see that private sector employment growth is up 1.8% year over year but I would like to draw your attention to the second bullet point here job openings job openings are up over 5.5% compared to that roughly 2% in employment growth and what that tells me is that we are opening more jobs and more jobs are being created than we have workers to fill them right now that is leading to a very tight labor market and a lot of economists speculate that we are moving toward full employment and I am putting full employment in air quotes on my side because it is one of those very technical and theoretical metrics that isn't well defined but basically it means that it is the healthiest level of employment for the US economy and that we generally won't move much past that on an unemployment basis but there are downsides to a tight labor market as I said before from the producer standpoint the employer standpoint it becomes very difficult to fill spots anecdotally I have heard it throughout mostly the industrial sector but the services sector as well Chris we are hiring we are expanding we are building new buildings we are bringing new machinery online that finds the labor to work it and it seems almost paradoxical that during a time of economic growth we have trouble bringing employees in to facilitate that growth for us and what that is is a short term disjoint between supply and demand ultimately wages having caught up with the demand of workers on the employee side and because of that we will see a lot of upward pressure on wages in the near term additionally we've seen the quit rate rising again almost paradoxically during times of high employment we see more people quit on the surface doesn't make much sense but if you look a little deeper into it what that means is that US workers are becoming comfortable with the labor market they are becoming more sure that if they leave the job that perhaps they are only content with not thrilled with being able to find another job or perhaps they wanted to move into the suburbs and get out of the city and now they feel that the labor market is strong enough that they will be able to get another job when they relocate that dual factor of a rising quit rate in higher wages can be very dangerous to an employer it's great for an employee because it means job security and more money in your parking lot more expenses on your side it means longer intervals in the job hunt and ultimately it means trouble retaining key employees if you don't offer those competitive compensation packages again on the on the risk side of things we're also seeing the baby boomers retiring and mass they're getting older, they're moving out of the labor force and as they move out of the labor force you risk losing long term employees who represent a significant basis of skill and knowledge for your industry again it's vital that you deal with these factors you have to be able to offer competitive compensation if you want to both retain your senior key employees while also attracting new young talent if you also want to realize the economic growth in the business cycle expansion that we're seeing over the next two years one of the ways we can do that is through non-financial compensation as I like to consider it again it's going to be a balancing act of paying more and saving money that can be very difficult to realize when it comes down to real market conditions but one of the things that we're seeing with the younger generation the much conversed about millennial generation is that they are less driven purely by pay purely by that wage or that salary instead they value fairly highly by all accounts various different things such as increased vacation time maybe laxard, dress standards or flex showers come in 30 minutes late work 30 minutes late depending on your situation and depending on the nature of your industry are all essentially quality of life improvements that are generally non detrimental but often non traditional if these are things that you can easily employ in your company it will help you not only retain retain talent but also do so hopefully at a lower price point for your more senior key employees that you're trying to keep on more so than their physical labor they're valuable for their knowledge for their accumulated experience if your key employees or senior employees transition either to retirement or to a different job before they pass on the majority of that accumulated experience you're essentially losing out on years worth of education because of that especially when it comes to some of your employees who are looking at retiring think about offering again flexible schedules maybe they only work 2 hours a week maybe their most stressful clients or jobs are taken away from them and they instead focus on training and transitioning the new to mid-level employees again all things you can do to try and balance and realize economic growth without losing out on all of your efficiency gains to higher wages ultimately that whole trend of economic growth being coupled with higher wages is being mirrored in the economy as a whole the consumer price index and the producer price index which are simply metrics for inflation with the economy again on one for the consumer side for those who go grocery shopping and receive a wage and one for the producer side those who employ and those who run the machines and run the mills and run the factories you can see that they're both rising in tandem and the magnitudes of rise the pace of inflation is going to vary between them for a little bit but the important takeaway here is that price levels are rising inflation is rising that means that it is a good time to be borrowing if you can lock in rates inflation is going to cut down on the real interest that you're paying so that will help you do some near term financing but it also means that if you aren't able to get low rates if you aren't able to get under the gun on those commodity price increases that we see you will be facing some significant pressures on your bottom line as your costs increase and it's vital that you pay attention to that so that your prices that you charge can at least mirror the costs that you incur and keep your profit margins static if not expanding as I mentioned before the FOMC the Federal Open Market Committee this is the Committee on the Fed that is in charge of setting and regulating the short term interest rates really a benchmark for interest rates throughout the economy they've realized this they're seeing the inflationary pressures take hold they're seeing the strong labor market and what I have here is their projections for what they expect to set interest rates as over the next three years and in the long run as well you can see behind a little bit in those blue dots those are the expectations as of December 2016 the last time we talked in the red you can see their most recent expectations and if you notice there's been almost no change that can be attributed to anything other than random noise again what we're seeing in the economy the Open Market Committee in the Fed what economists in general are seeing in the economy three months or six months ago they're continuing to see that trend that economic train is staying on track it is moving at an understandable pace and there haven't been any significant surprises that would cause us to either alter our projections or alter our general long term outlook for both the next three years and the long run as well what I'll draw your eye to here is this longer run interest rate level covered around anywhere from 2.8 to 3.5% really right on that 3% line that's a pretty well appreciated fact is that we seem to be moving out of the period of low inflation and low interest rates the period of easy money is ending the European Central Bank has begun to whisper about mirroring what the Federal Reserve has done with raising the cost of borrowing they haven't yet but they have talked about ending their quantitative easing or essentially free money program and again what that means is that not only within the US but around the world as we progress through the next two, three, four, five years it is going to be more expensive to operate your business replacing your equipment expanding your factory floor all of that is going to be more expensive in the long run as interest rates really double down on the cost that you're paying and it's important to plan for that if you were planning on expanding in 2017 or 2018 maybe 2019 you haven't decided sooner is better again if you were to expand right now you have the entirety of 2017 2018 of general economic expansion as well as relatively affordable costs of borrowing in order to buoy you and help get you on your feet during that transitionary period if you risk waiting too long into the second half of 2018 you risk incurring significant capital expenditures spending significant amounts of cash and taking some significant risks as we are expecting to move into an economic recession depending on the industry that you're directly tied to or loosely tied to that can change by a few months but it is important to know that the first half of 2019 is going to be a relatively difficult time compared to what we've seen in the last year or expect to see over the next two years so here I've prepared for you a slide that again I urge you to come back to print this out and keep it in your office circulate it to your managers and your team leaders this is eight steps that we've compiled here at ITR Economics eight management objectives in order for you to take advantage of growth over the next two years again as business cycle consultants we understand that there are ups and downs not only in the economy but in companies as well they're natural and as close to a law in economics as you can come because of that our goal here is to help TMMI and to help your members realize as much growth during the up turns of the economy and during the upside of your business cycle while mitigating decline during the downside of your economy and this is what I have prepared these management objectives for therefore the expansion in 2017 and 2018 first and foremost we've already done this on a macroeconomic scale know where you and your markets are in the cycle knowing whether your markets are seeing increased demand beyond just that anecdotal experience is vital for you to make informed long term strategic decisions this is why if you jump down to number eight follow what I consider the must watch leading indicators we've looked more ready PMI, ITRLI, housing employment these are all things that you can keep track of during our quarterly economic webinars and you can also see in our monthly ITR trends report if you're looking for a more granular approach budget for continued overall expansion in 2017 barring immediate restructuring or stagnation within your company your industries are going to be expanding in 2017 and 2018 and that means that the economy is going to facilitate risk it is better to take a risk and fail in fall while the ground is rising up to meet you than when it is falling beneath your feet the next two years are the time to take the more immediate and the more risky managerial decision in order to grow your business ultimately as I said before retention is paramount keep your most important employees and do everything you can to try and hasten the process of filling lots within your payroll ultimately when it comes down to both economic and company growth you're only as good as your employees and if you don't have the employees either hired or trained in a timely manner you're just not going to realize the growth that you want to or expected to again come back to these management objectives and use these to plan for the next seven to eight quarters before that mild 2019 action that we're expecting and now speaking of your core markets I'd like to transition away from the broad strokes macroeconomic view to the more regular industry view here we have our forecast for pharmaceutical and medical device production you can see on the left we have our 12 month moving average of the production index and you can see that it's rising at a significant pace and will continue to do so over the next two years in late 2018 into early 2019 we do expect a slight slow down and you can see that as the rates of change approach to zero line however the US population is both growing and aging and more people and older people especially incur more medical costs and demand more medical goods because of that if you're involved in the medical industry especially the medical device or pharmaceuticals industry you have supply and demand on your side and this rising and you will be able to facilitate that expansion and supply in order to meet it here we have food and foods preparation production again we're seeing significant rise on an annual basis however we are approaching a business cycle peak luckily as I mentioned before through 2018 and over the past year the US consumer has been the dominant driving factor within the economy that's not going to change again because of this you see that nice 12-12 soft landing a period of slower growth and stagnation more than decline followed by another period of expansion as we move through that recessionary period really every aspect of the food and foods preparation industry is expanding on a year over year basis that is the general trend however as I mentioned before we're seeing no commodity price rise but food prices have lags behind a little bit if you're directly tied to food prices and they factor into your cost structure ensure that you're not jumping the gun and rising your prices too quickly because you don't want to get caught out and out competed by any of your competitors and undercut as I should say if I have to have a mantra for the next two years it is prioritize market share over profits you have to let your prices decline you have to take a slight profitability in order to maintain or attract new customers do that because ultimately market share is what will help you weather long term decline during recessions like 2019 and beyond personal care products production excuse me we're in a period of slower growth right now you can see on an annual basis we're stagnating ticking down a little bit but we do expect general rise over the next two years to take hold over the next one to two quarters again without sounding like a broken record this is being driven by those strong consumer trends that we're talking about people are not only going out and buying more things they're buying more expensive things so over the next two years if you're looking into deploying higher price point goods or perhaps more luxury goods think about it that way we are in the market for that right now there's a metric called disposable personal income and what that is is essentially your after tax after expenses wages it's money that's burning a hole in your pocket we've been seeing that rise for almost a year now which is signaling that the US consumer is not only willing to buy more expensive things but they also have the wherewithal to do so as well beverages, coffee and tea production again a strong consumer tied industry we expect general growth through 2019 but you see that in the 2018-2019 period that annual growth rate really kind of slows down to the zero line that's going to be a period that is a time for caution where you have to make sure to maintain competitive and retain your customers because it's going to be about a year or a year and a half where there is very little new business coming to the market so you have to keep what you have if you want to maintain your market share but again a strong consumer links trend the consumer is buying and will recover and we don't expect you to fall into a full blown technical recession during the next three years chemicals and cleaning products production imagine your bleaches your ammonias, your detergents of all kinds your soaps we almost fell into a recession over the past six months or so but those rising chemical prices again being driven by higher energy and oil prices generally have helped this segment of the economy to just barely skate by that zero line we're expecting at least two years of significant growth 1.9% growth in 2017 followed by an equally respectable 1.5% growth excuse me in 2018 but as a caution by early 2019 this segment of the economy will fall into recession so it's paramount where you might be able to get away with more risky behavior in those other food and beverage and personal beauty care product lines if you're exposed to those on the more chemical industrial side of things you will be facing some significant headwinds moving to 2019 so that's paramount you do everything you can over the next two years in order to prepare for that growth, hardwoods, components and parts production again another one of these economic indicators that is relatively vague in name but this is essentially any good that is sold that is not immediately consumed and expected to last three years or longer imagine everything from hardware to automotive parts to computers surprisingly enough I know some of you may doubt that to furniture there are two different trends going on in here those catering to the industrial side of things and those catering to the consumer side of things again your furniture your home hardware imagine everything you'd buy at a low that's all doing very well right now it's outperforming the general industry as a whole we expect to see some significant growth breaking into that 3% range even in 2017 if you're closely linked to the consumer whereas our industrial compatriots are feeling a little bit of pain right now they're basically even with the next year and they won't see quite as much positivity again we do expect you to fall into a very mild recession by 2019 but again it's not going to be a capital R recession like we're used to but more of a period of stagnation or decline now very briefly I'd like to talk a little bit about the global economy again we know what's happening in some of these key industries we know what's happening in the US as a whole but what can we be expect if we are tied to our foreign allies our foreign friends well here I have some global leading indicators like we looked at the PMI for the US here we have the Eurozone Composite in blue that's for manufacturing services we have the EU manufacturing PMI and the JPMorgan Global PMI again you can see that they're all moving in unison right now they're all above the euro and they are rising we are gaining traction if you look at the national leading indicators for the OECD you can consider that the essentially club of well off or wealthy countries it's up the major Asian countries the leading indicators are up both Canada, China, India, Japan all of the leading indicators are looking up while there's some significant differences between some of these countries imagine China and Brazil in two very different situations right now improvement is the name of the game right here so if you're linked to the export or import side of things 2017 and 2018 are only going to be better in the last year or two I have some charts for you here showing just a brief overview of industrial production within different major economic areas here you can see North America I have South America Europe and Asia in the interest of time I'm not going to go through all of them but again I urge you to come back to this and if there are any countries your interest in increasing your exposure to or perhaps are worried about looking and it's a good brief dive on the global economic picture in general and finally I had your management objectives for the 2017-2018 period how do you maximize that growth and here I have some management objectives for mitigating that decline in 2019 that second part of the picture again in the interest of time I'm not going to go through all of them you'll notice that these are the same objectives I had for you last quarter again our long-term outlook has not changed if you took any of these management objectives to heart during the last quarter consider doing so stick with those plans because it's only going to get more and more vital as we move toward the 2019 again the most important management objective I can give you in order to mitigate not only the 2019 recession but again any recessionary periods to come use periods of expansion to capture market share undercut your competitors release new products invest in marketing brand yourself capturing that market share is what is going to protect the core of your business during times of turmoil that's all I have for you today I'm going to turn it back to Rebecca and again if you have any questions or any metrics we've looked at moving forward or any questions about the economy in general that perhaps I glazed over please either get in touch with Rebecca and she'll forward them over to me and my team or you can contact questions at itreconomics.com and we would love to get back to you Chris thank you for the great reflection of the current economy and issues at hand for the packaging and processing industry I'd like to open up the session for questions please under any questions you have answered in the message chat box on your screen or you can press star to unmute your phone and so we'll open it up for questions okay Chris I have no questions from the audience at this time just make sure and we did have one sorry we did have one question early in the webinar because of some technical difficulties that we were having the presentation was muted for a few minutes I think at the beginning you were making some opening remarks just probably around slide one and we do have a question hold on could you provide any specifics on the Mexican economy and potential challenges I'm curious if that's going to come up obviously a hot button issue right now so I'm going to start again as I did earlier I moved right past all the political speculation the policy speculation and I looked at what the data is saying when it comes to Mexico Mexico has really developed itself as one of the front runners of developing nations over the past 10 to 20 years since NAFTA came about they've liberalized their economy they've become relatively competitive low-cost manufacturers and that trend shows no immediate signs of abating we've seen a lot of movement and capital investment into Mexico from both Canada and the US and they're also starting to serve as a hub for foreign goods as well the long-term prospects if you've listened to us at ITR for Mexico are bright they have demographics on their side much that we here at the US do and again they've made some significant strides in liberalizing and privatizing their economy and now I will give the caveat that I give every time we here at ITR Economics are an economic and business cycle forecasting firm we are not a political forecasting firm obviously the links between the economy and politics are inextricable and oftentimes obvious so I will consider them and I will discuss them but we do not make judgments about whether or not one political action is likely or one election is likely to sway either way because essentially and we all saw that this year statistically there is just no robust way to predict that on the long-term problems facing Mexico NAFTA NAFTA has been the single largest driver of economic growth and prosperity for the Mexican people most likely ever again it helped to liberalize their economy as barriers were broken down and they were forced to compete with the US the global powerhouse if we were to repeal NAFTA there would likely be some significant pain on the Mexican side of the border more expensive imports and exports would limit their access to cheap agricultural products from us but also limit their exposure to foreign direct investment in a lot of those large manufacturers again imagine your fords your carriers your Oshkosh that have been moving over there any barriers to free trade imagine taxes or legislation levied against the Mexican economy will likely be the largest hindrance to their long-term economic prosperity that we see right now but again in the immediate term looking just at the economic data on an industrial production basis they are even with the previous year they're actually the the best performing North American nation beating out both the US and Canada so cautious optimism is the name of the game with Mexico but in general it's still a very receptive place to either relocating or re-headquarter your manufacturing basis one of the most important parts about the differences between Mexico and the US is that here in the US we have what we call capital intensive manufacturing imagine the high-tech fancy lab operated manufacturing sectors robotics, AI heavy industrial processes that are very technical but we also have very high wages meaning that labor intensive production imagine sewing or packaging things or riveting things by hand we don't do that well because it's simply too expensive if you want to realize growth in Mexico it's going to be a story of finding a way to separate out your capital intensive aspect of your manufacturing in the US while moving your labor intensive manufacturing to Mexico that's how you can really play both sides of the coin there Thank you Chris one more question aside from the political ramifications of the triggering of Brexit which happened yesterday can you provide any insight under what people should be looking out for in terms of activity in the Eurozone coming up in the near future? It has been a fascinating economy we've been looking at political life and in fighting within the region more so since we've really seen their founding obviously Britain walking away from the table or speaking about doing so from Marine Le Pen side of the island France we've heard some rumblings that's potentially following suit we've heard a lot of outcries against the Euro and about globalization in general which used to be the hallmarks of the European economy despite that Europe is doing well Western Europe in particular is growing at a good clip in the high 1-2% range they're still struggling with some unemployment regionally but overall they're benefiting from a relatively historically weak Euro so it's a good time for European importers as opposed to people trying to sell into Europe but ultimately the biggest risk in Europe is again I mentioned it earlier that combination of low interest rates in quantitative easing that very loose, easy, cheap monetary policy that we've seen from the European Central Bank essentially what this does in the long run is artificially cheap in investments in one risk that we see from that in the long term is that if they persist with these easy money policies artificially low interest rates that it could lead to bubble investing if people had to pull the full market driven price of various investments or goods or commodities because the return on investment isn't there so it'll be crucial over the next year or two in the longer term to look at the actions of the European Central Bank right now many spectators are betting on the ECB lagging behind whatever the Federal Reserve does by between four to six quarters which is a pretty good bet historically they tend to follow our lead and if interest rates do begin to rise very quickly that's when you know you have to start potentially pulling back and again protecting yourself from any kind of external shocks because it could result in a mild market correction or economic downturn. Thanks Chris. That's all the questions we have for today. Once again I would like to apologize to all of our participants for the technical issues at the front of the webinar. Sorry about that but I would like to remind you that this webinar will be available for download and watching at a later date probably within a few days it will be on the PMMI.org website. On behalf of PMMI thank you for participating today. As a final note you'll receive an email to complete an evaluation on today's webinar. Please complete the evaluation as soon as possible and let us know how we can improve this webinar and thank you very much. Chris you've been great. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was a pleasure as always.