Currency Impact on Connector Industry Growth

The euro and yen decline in value against the US dollar has started to moderate in 2016 while the Chinese yuan is now declining more in value to the dollar. The following table measures the decline for February 2016 versus February 2015 and shows the YTD results for these three currencies.

Europe, China and Japan account for 60.0% of world connector sales. As a result, currency fluctuation to the US dollar is having a significant impact on our reporting of sales performance in US dollars. In 2015, the impact of these currency fluctuations to the US dollar resulted in a 5.6-point difference (lower) in industry performance to local currencies.

The following table shows year to date February sales performance by region in US dollars and local currencies.

Exchange rates are having the largest impact on the euro and the yuan. In US dollars, connector sales have declined -3.3% through February 2016. However, in local currencies, the industry is down -1.0%.

Although the larger economies of the world (except China) are seeing less significant differences in exchange rates to the US dollar in 2016, there are other regions where exact sales dollars are not as visible or easy to track. In some of these regions, there is a large discrepancy in the value of the US dollar to the local currency. These regions are listed in the following table.

Each one of these countries is performing 5.1% to 16.6% better in their local currencies than in US dollars.