ATLANTA – ECIA’s latest survey shows the measurement of actual sales sentiment for December outperformed the sales outlook for December from the prior survey by a wide margin.

“The overall component sales sentiment outlook for December published in the November report was 95.2, an indication of expectation of a month-to-month sales decline,” said chief analyst Dale Ford, ECIA. “The actual sentiment measured for December in the latest survey is 114.4, a difference of 19.2 points and an indication of sales growth. This was also an improvement over the November actual sales sentiment of 111. Even more encouraging is the jump in the index in expectations looking forward to January 2022. The sentiment forecast for January jumped to 125.8, the highest level since August 2021. The overall end-market sentiment index mirrors the product index closely.”

Semiconductors lead the upward swing in sentiment at 130, a dramatic difference from the outlook of 100 for December.

Passive components and electro-mechanical/connector components also far outperformed expectations, with actual sentiment compared to forecast sentiment coming in 15.3 and 12.2 points higher, respectively.

Looking toward January, all product index measures are forecasting robust sequential sales growth between 119.6 for passive components up to 135.5 for semiconductors.