Die Casting News

The material presented in this video are some highlights from NADCA’s online webinar - Alloy Effects, Phase Diagrams, Microstructure.

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The material presented in this video are some highlights from NADCA’s online webinar - High Integrity Die Casting: Alloys for High Integrity Die Casting.

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North American Die Casting Association's President Steve Udvardy, reviews the Trump Administration, Macro Economics and Die Casting Markets in this three part series.

Good day everyone, and welcome to the latest update of the North American Die Casting Industry State of the Industry. I'm Steve Udvardy, and pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you today. (This is part three about the Die Casting Market.)

Die Casting Market

Now, let's shift to our markets that die casting service, and then we'll take a look at shipments. The number one market served by die casting is automotive. The second largest market is housing. It behooves us to track fairly closely what's happening in the auto industry and the housing market. Sometimes the housing market as our second largest market surprises individuals, but you have to look at what we roll into the housing market. It's not just lock and window hardware and the [inaudible 00:33:13] in your bathroom, et cetera. It's also things that new home owners buy, and that's what we roll into the housing market and what makes it then our second largest market served by die casting. Appliances, lawn and garden equipment are things that people buy typically when they buy new homes.

           

Let's take a look at automotive. 2016 and 2017 were stellar years for light vehicle sales. Depending on who you talk to, last year, we were at about 17.2, maybe 17.5 million units, slightly higher than what we were in 2016. Towards the middle of last year, there was speculation that the same levels of sales would not be sustained in 2018. In late 2017, the forecast was for some slight softening, and the forecast from the National Auto Dealers Association showed a projection of 16.7 million units being sold in 2018, so dropping below the 17 million mark, but still 16.7, although slightly softened as compared to 2016 and 2016, still a very healthy automotive market and automotive sales.

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North American Die Casting Association's President Steve Udvardy, reviews the Trump Administration, Macro Economics and Die Casting Markets in this three part series.

Good day everyone, and welcome to the latest update of the North American Die Casting Industry State of the Industry. I'm Steve Udvardy, and pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you today.

Macro Economics

Okay, now let's turn to macro economics and our GDP growth. This chart shows GDP growth by quarter from 2014 through the end of the first quarter of 2018. 2018 initially came in at about 2%. GDP growth was then revised at 2.2%. The projection for the second quarter, although the numbers are not in yet, is 2.5%. Is that good? Is that bad? Well, one, it's positive. It's a positive number, but if we go back to the most recent recession period, when were coming out of 2009, our GDP growth was hanging around 2-3%. That's what had taken us a substantial amount of time to dig ourselves out of the hole that was dug during the most recession period. All of the prior recession periods had recovery rates of GDP growth between 5-6%. Although 2-3 is not bad, it has not been the 5-6% that we had post prior recession periods. Where do we see all of 2018? Wells Fargo, for instance, that manages our investment portfolio, projects about 2.8% for the year. That's as compared to 2.6% for all of 2015, 2.1% 2016, 2.5% 2017, but depending on what source you look at, for all of 2018, the expected GDP growth is going to be somewhere between 2.6-2.9%.

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North American Die Casting Association's President Steve Udvardy, reviews the Trump Administration, Macro Economics and Die Casting Markets in this three part series.

Good day everyone, and welcome to the latest update of the North American Die Casting Industry State of the Industry. I'm Steve Udvardy, and pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you today.

Administration

Today, we're going to cover three topics within this state of the industry report. First, we'll take a look at the administration and whether they're doing any good at this point, getting close to the midterm of the administration. We'll take a look at some macro economics, and then lastly cover specifically die casting markets and shipments.

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