Webinar summary for The Nowcasting Edge: Monthly AKAsights into Industrials Focus on Q2 (07/18/2025)

Industrial Growth and Market Trends

Q2 organic growth is expected to be flat, similar to Q1. Data shows slight deceleration in North America, much improvement in Europe, and a flattish trend in Asia. Looking ahead to Q3, leading indicators (eg fuel/oil, aluminum, copper, tin prices) have worsened, and we expect 2-5% slowdown.

Revenue Consensus and Sector Disconnects

We see higher level of disconnects with consensus revenues in the packaging, chemicals, and building products subsectors. We find little relationship this quarter between organic revenue Y/Y growth relative to previous quarter, and the level of disconnects with consensus revenues as we have seen in the past. We estimate more revenue beats than misses, and note that the revenue misses seem to be concentrated in chemicals, and electrical equipment.

Regional Industry Analysis

For key industries driving this quarter’s AKAnomics estimates, we focused on chemicals, building products, and ground transportation. Chemicals subsector shows meaningful deterioration in both volumes and pricing, driven by a slowdown in North American manufacturing and petrochemical industries. In the building products sector, we note mixed drivers, with deterioration in new home construction but better home improvement spending. Additionally, infrastructure construction shows strength, contrary to residential construction. Within transportation, rail subsector is showing weakness with deterioration in coal mining, while trucking shows strength from volumes. Steel names show much improvement in growth from a combination of volumes and prices.

North America vs ROW

Even though North America has been the key driver for organic revenue growth change this quarter, Europe has contributed positively towards the overall outlook.