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TRANSCRIPT:
Marcus Blood:
There's still a lot of question marks around the industry and around the economy and really around our country as we enter into the fall and some of the things that will take place through that. But there's really a lot of positive signs in our industry that are starting to show stability and improvement and kind of turning back the other direction from what we've been facing over the last 18 months. We're seeing some stabilization with inventory. We're seeing some more normal types of trends with retailers and within the supply chain and things that are allowing us to go back to focusing on efficiencies and maybe have some optimism of what's coming.
**What's influencing the recycled pallet industry right now?
(00:52):
I think if I were going to put my finger on the three biggest factors, it would start with the Fed and the interest rate. There's a lot of static around it. I think that they are finally going to make some moves. The question is how much, if they move a quarter a point, it's probably status quo until they make another move. If they move a half a point or three quarters of a point or a point, then it's really going to trigger some things that will spur, again, building starts different things in the economy and really even consumer spending going into the holiday. If you move a point on the interest rate, how will that impact consumer spending with a credit card? So I think that's probably my key factor is what happens with the interest rate over the next 30 to 60 days. One of the biggest uncertainties for us as not only an industry but the country is the presidential election that's now just a couple of months away really.
(01:44):
And the uniqueness of that. I mean, this is probably one of the most unprecedented elections in the history of our country, and there's been a lot of change. So whatever the outcome of that election is, is going to have an impact on our economy and on our industry. We've also seen a very good produce season almost nationwide this year. There's been places that produce has been a struggle over the last three or four years due to drought, due to flooding, due to hurricanes, due to a lot of different natural impacts, and we've actually had a good solid year of steady produce. And then I think consumers, while they're paying attention to inflation, inflation's held a little bit for the last two or three, four months, and I think there's a little bit more comfort there in retail spending and going into a holiday season. That'll be good for us. We should see, I think, some confidence in going into the holidays and spending there, even though there's some uncertainties around that. So I think all those trends are good and we're seeing some good signs, but a lot of factors that could still change and tweak and affect our industry between now and the end of the calendar year and definitely will have an impact.
**How is 48forty helping customers navigate these factors?
(03:05):
Our footprint and our 70 plus facilities across the US and Canada gives us a unique vision to what's happening from market to market. Our real logistics side of the company that's on retailer stocks, that gives us visibility to what's going on at the retail level. I think we have a very unique visibility to what is happening and what might happen. Top that off with our ability to reach out and accommodate our customer's needs from market to market. Our capacity to reach every market in the US just again truly sets us apart and the information that we can share with our customers to help 'em maybe look out through these questionable times of what's to come over the next 60 90 days.
**What is on the horizon?
(03:54):
Again, I think that we've seen a lot of signs that the market is improving and there's some stabilization, and so if we weren't in an election year, I would say that my outlook would be that we're going to continue to see stabilization price improvement, and that we would get back to pretty well a normal activity that we could look forward to over the next two to three years. With the question marks that we do have, I think it's pretty hard to look out there and really indicate until we know what happens in November and even really what happens with the Fed and the interest rates, that's going to have a big impact regardless of what happens in the stock market with the Fed, with the presidential election, we have people that need products. We need to move food, we need to move the different things out there. We still have a housing demand regardless of where the interest rate is. All of those things are going to create a need to, for the supply chain to continue to move.
15 сен 2024
