There's no two without three. More bad news for the Italian industry. After the collapse of the industrial production and the decline in exports recorded in December 2018, the alarm arrives on turnover.
According to the data communicated today by Istat, in December, industrial revenues decreased by 3,5% compared to November, suffering the sharpest drop on the foreign market. On an annual basis, the decline is as much as 7,3% (data corrected for calendar effects). This is the steepest trend decline since November 2009.
Even worse is the data on industry orders which, in December 2018, decreased by 1,8% compared to November, due to the losses suffered on the foreign market, and by 5,3% (raw data) on an annual basis. This is the largest decline since July 2016.
On average in 2018, both turnover and orders are slowing down: the growth of the former stops at 2,3% against +5,6% in the previous year (data corrected for calendar effects); while for orders there is a +2%, a marked slowdown compared to the +6,3% of 2017 (raw values).
The decline, explains Istat, affects practically all industrial sectorsi, but is particularly large in the sector of other means of transport (23,6%), where it compares with a particularly positive figure in the previous year. The pharmaceutical industry (-13,0%) and the chemical industry (-8,5%) also fell sharply on an annual basis. The strong difficulty of the car has been confirmed: orders for motor vehicles fell by 18,4% yoy in December 2018 and on average for the year they still recorded a drop of 2,3%. As regards turnover, the tendential decrease in December was 7,5%, while it was 3,1% for the whole year.
The data on the industry caused the sudden reaction of the spread, shot up to 273 basis points from the 260 of the opening. In Piazza Affari, the Ftse Mib expanded its declines, dropping 0,9%, before recovering to -0,65%. The banks were in the red: Ubi Banca (-3%), Banca Generali (-1,72%), Finecobank (-1,65%), Banco Bpm (-1,45%).
