Global exports of liquefied natural gas in June totaled approximately 28.2 million tons on board 472 vessels, much lower than June 2019’s pace of 29.3 million tons. Approximately 27.6 million tons arrived on 447 vessels at import terminals in June, compared to 29.5 million tons in June 2019. The number of floating LNG cargoes remained volatile last month, with the highest number of vessels at 33 occurring on June 19.
New York is reopening and the success here could provide critical insights into the nature of the wider retail recovery. New York City was among the hardest-hit cities and the state was one of the hardest-hit states, and if a rebound can successfully happen here, there is tremendous room for optimism throughout the country. So has the recovery shown thus far.
Footfall across consumer settings in Italy has continued its dramatic rise over the last week, making it the first country to see activity levels climb to those inline with – or in excess of – pre-lockdown levels. Every country covered by Huq’s ‘All Consumer’ Indicator has an increase in the last two weeks, however the UK remains bottom of the league in terms of footfall across consumer outlets.
When the seriousness of the health threat from coronavirus set in, and shelter-in-place orders were put in place across the U.S. in March, the effect on job postings was dramatic. Job postings on Indeed dropped at a rate previously unseen, and by May 1, they were 39% below the trend from the previous year.
Australia has had a sluggish start to 2020 so far after a buoyant 2019 propelled by a record $14 billion of cross-border investment. The sharp downshift has drawn comparisons to the misery of 2008 which followed a bumper 2007, but the parallels in headline deal activity are just about where the similarities end. Back in 2007, Australia’s real estate investment landscape was very different.
Fewer cars bought. Fewer miles driven. Less travel. Reduced or eliminated paychecks and massive spikes in unemployment. The problems are legion for the US auto sector. Even with some initial estimates of the difficulties proving to be overstated, credit challenges could remain with the US auto sector for some time. The UK auto sector, where production has been reduced drastically and jobs are being cut, finds itself in a similar situation.
A common narrative during the COVID recovery period has been that indoor malls are facing a near existential crisis. To analyze the validity of this argument, we dove into ten of the top indoor malls and ten of the top outdoor centers to compare their relative performance in order to break down the pace of recovery and the potential for the coming months.
The Covid19 crisis has exposed the risks in single, long and complex supply chains that are only as strong as their weakest link. Companies are moving quickly to multiple, short, simple and robust supply structures wherever possible. Some companies view their supply chain details as trade secrets, but a number of financial data platforms – such as Bloomberg and Factset – provide detailed information on suppliers and customers for many of the largest firms in the world.
From a high level, downtown areas have been slow to recover. Visitation remains very low in CBGs with large volumes of office space, while the use of public areas and some parks by Residents and Locals has actually exceeded 2019 visitation levels, even though mobility overall is still down about 50% as of this writing, largely due to out-of-town Workers staying home and Tourists staying away.
Measuring foot traffic at consumer discretionary businesses helps us understand the extent to which people are back to shopping for non-essentials - an indicator for increasing flexibility of movement and confidence in the outlook. During April and May there was a massive year-over-year drop in visits to non-essential locations. This make sense given most stores were closed. As you would expect, this trend was most pronounced in states such as Nevada and New York.
Last week was the week foot traffic tapped the brakes as consumers grew cautious in the face of rising case counts in several states. After nearly a month of strong growth across most categories – including some surprising gainers like malls and casual dining – foot traffic stalled for 7 of the top 9 categories. Big box retail, grocery, pharmacy, mall, fast casual dining, and fast food all paused their reemergence and shrank a few points.
In Part 2 of this blog, we’ll take a look at consumer spending on commuting since the shelter-in-place orders were initiated across the country and resulted in many Americans working from home. Public transit and options such as taxis and ride sharing continue to look sluggish in terms of spending, although car rentals have picked up at a faster pace.
Today, we’re going to continue to review what reemergence has looked like so far. It’s even more complex than we had previously stated: traffic recovery is varying by region not just by the amount of recovery but by the speed and direction of change.
What has returned to ‘normal’ in the U.S labor market is the fact that the trailing 30-day average of daily new and removed job listings on company websites throughout the country are now back in tandem with one another. And while the daily number of active job openings isn’t rising, new and removed jobs have risen steadily since May which provides some evidence that some portion of businesses have started or intend to start hiring again.
A myriad of problems are confronting the US housing market — far fewer homes are being built and new construction planning processes are diminishing. The rate of home sales is also falling. While there is some evidence emerging that things are beginning to look up, credit problems persist for this sector.
As a result of COVID-19, by mid-March restaurants in most parts of the United States began suspending operations. According to research from 1010data, year-over-year sales in fine-dining, casual-dining and fast-casual establishments quickly plummeted 91%, 77% and 49%, respectively.
Key Industries across Europe have plateaued following an initial growth spurt post-lockdown, with footfall to Chemical, Biotechnology and Defence manufacturing plants dropping by around 10pts in the last week. According to Huq’s ‘Key Industries Indicator’, these three staple industries saw an initial flurry of activity post lockdown but this rising trend plateaued here and has yet to see another surge.
The pace of cross-border capital flowing into the U.S. commercial real estate market fell in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the year prior, the latest edition of the US Cross-Border Investment Compendium shows. The slowing marks the continuation of a trend seen before the global health crisis erupted.
As we wrote last week, we’ve seen a relatively sharp increase in new job openings across most of the country since the end of April. Through May 17th, new job listings on company and employer websites throughout the country had risen 28% since the week ending April 26th with the largest increases in South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Rhode Island.
ETR launched its Summer Emerging Technology Study last Thursday afternoon to gauge CIO sentiment levels across 300+ private enterprise technology companies. As a follow up, we asked these same high-level IT decision makers to provide insight as to the type of recovery their organization expects due to COVID-19. Specifically, we gauged whether their organization is expecting a V-shaped, U-shaped, or L-shaped recovery due to COVID-19.
