Displaying items by tag: Forecast

Brazil: Cement sales totalled 31.5Mt in the first half of 2021, up by 16% year-on-year. The National Cement Industry Association (SNIC) attributed the growth to home renovations and new construction projects. The association has forecast total sales for 2021 of 64.2Mt, corresponding to an increase of 6% compared to 2020 levels. It expects the same segments to drive growth in 2022, though at a lower rate.

India: JK Cement has targeted a 10% year-on-year sales growth in its 2022 financial year, which ends on 31 March 2022. The Economic Times has reported that the company foresees sales growth due to the on-going government infrastructure investment push, minimal monsoon disruptions and pent-up cement demand following Covid-19-led disruptions. Cement chief operating officer Rajnish Kapur said that growth momentum from the end of the 2021 financial year will likely continue throughout the coming nine months, despite a Covid-19 led sales drop in the first quarter of the 2021 financial year.

The cement producer also expects that its new cement plant project at Panna in Madhya Pradesh is likely to be completed in the 2023 financial year due to Covid-19 related delays. The plant will bring its total cement production capacity to around 20Mt/yr from nearly 15Mt/yr at present once it is finished. The company is also considering acquisitions to further increase its capacity to 25Mt/yr by the mid-2020s.

UK: Fitch Ratings says it does not expect the financial profiles of cement producers to be changed by decarbonisation efforts in its rating horizon. The credit rating agency expects that regulatory scrutiny, investor pressure and societal awareness are likely to accelerate the building materials sector’s decarbonisation drive. However, it predicts that producers will pass on costs to consumers as there are no substitutes for its products. In addition, demand for building materials will grow, supported by increasing needs for infrastructure to cope with the transition to a low-carbon economy and the physical effects of climate change.

It added that, since there are no low carbon solution readily available, such improvements will require ‘significant’ investment and research. Fitch Ratings expect this to arrive after 2030 to meet the tight 2050 sustainability targets by both governments and companies. The cost of this may be large especially as government incentives to support it are, as yet, uncertain.

Fitch Ratings noted that the industry had made significant progress with an 18% reduction in the global average CO₂ intensity of cement production since 1990. However, due to growing demand for cement, the sector’s gross emissions have increased by 50%. It pointed out the large role China and India have to play in emissions reductions as they are the largest concrete producers in the world. However, Europe is seen as the most demanding region for decarbonisation regulations at present.

Mexico: Cemex has forecast full-year earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$3.10bn in 2021, up by 26% year-on-year from US$2.46bn in 2020. The forecast figure is 7% higher than its previous prediction of US$2.90bn in its first quarter 2021 earnings call. The company said that it expects the double-digit growth to continue into 2022. It said that in 2023 and estimated US$400m of additional EBITDA will come from bolt-on investments and its on-going 10Mt/yr cement capacity expansion.

India: Ratings agency ICRA has forecast a 25% year-on-year decline in cement sales during the first quarter of the 2022 financial year to 30 June 2021. Domestic cement demand fell by 4% year-on-year and by 35% month-on-month in April 2021, according to the Press Trust of India. The agency said that this was due to the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak to rural areas and the imposition of numerous regional lockdowns. Pent-up demand is expected to drive a gradual recovery in the second quarter from July 2021. Costs for cement companies increased by 5% nationally year-on-year in April 2021. Increased fuel, power and transport costs all contributed to the rise.

US: The Portland Cement Association (PCA) Market Intelligence Group has released its Spring 2021 Regional Forecasts for the Northeast, Central, West, and Southeast regions. Residential construction has been identified as the main driver of consumption growth in most regions.

The Pacific sub-region of the West is forecast to grow by 1.1% year-on-year in 2021, while the Mountain sub-region will drop by 0.7% following strong growth in 2020.

The West South Central sub-region is expected to rise by 2.3% and the West North Central by 1.2%. In the former this will be supported by residential demand and a recovery in the oil well cement market. The PCA added that he sub-region maintains very strong construction fundamentals given demand from strong in-migration and an expanding tax base.

The PCA noted that the Northeast had been hit ‘hard’ by the coronavirus pandemic but that cement consumption still grew by 0.6% in 2020. In 2021 the association has forecast growth of 0.1%. Although residential construction is expected to drive demand the association said that the region is expected to lag behind national trends in public cement consumption given, “state fiscal conditions and the characteristics of the region.”

Finally, the PCA forecasts that cement consumption in the South Atlantic sub-region will be ‘strong’ with growth of 6.8% in 2021 and 2.1% in 2022. Demand in the East South Central sub-region is also expected to be positive with consumption growth of 7.6% in 2021 and 1.9% in 2022.

Another week and it’s another commodity story related to the effects of coronavirus. This time the Indian press and financial analysts have started to notice a shift in the fuel mix of some of the major producers from petcoke to coal. UltraTech Cement moved to 30% petcoke and 60% imported coal in the fourth quarter of its 2021 financial year that ended on 31 March 2021. This compares to a reported mix of 77% and 10% in the previous year according to Mint. Dalmia Bharat reduced its share of petcoke to 52% in the fourth quarter from 70% in the third quarter, while its coal mix was 35 - 40% in the fourth quarter.

Price is the driver here. UltraTech Cement’s chief financial officer Atul Daga summed the situation up in an earnings call in late January 2021. Essentially, he said that fuel represented about 13% of total costs for cement producers in India and that both the cost of coal and petcoke nearly doubled from June 2020 to January 2021. However, coal is seen as the cheaper option, hence the move towards it in the fuels mix ratio. The petcoke market meanwhile has suffered due to reduced oil refinery output due to, you guessed it, the effect of coronavirus on global markets in 2020. Scarcity in the US market has particularly affected the decisions on buyers for Indian cement companies since this is the key source of their imports. Demand for petcoke from Latin America and the Mediterranean hasn’t helped either. Both petcoke and coal markets are expected to stabilise in the second half of 2021. Diesel prices have also risen recently causing UltraTech Cement’s power and fuel costs to increase by 28% year-on-year to US$356m and logistics costs, including freight expenses, to rise by 25% to US$449m in the fourth quarter of its 2021 financial year.

With this in mind it’s interesting then, that for some analysts at least, fuel prices have been seen as more worrying for cement producer profits than the latest round of coronavirus-related lockdowns from India’s second wave of infection. Fitch Ratings for example, warned that the impact of mounting fuel costs would continue to be seen in the quarter to June 2021 but that it would subside due to the switch in fuel mix and price rises passed to end consumers. On the lockdowns, it forecast that localised restrictions, with cement plants being allowed to continue operating in most states, would cause a far less pronounced drop in cement demand than during the first national lockdown.

Graph 1: Monthly cement production in India, January 2019 – April 2021. Source: Office of the Economic Adviser.

Graph 1 above shows that the crisis the Indian cement sector faced during the first lockdown, when production crumbled by 85% year-on-year to 4.3Mt in April 2020. The following recovery saw production reach its second highest ever figure at 32.9Mt in March 2021. It’s too soon to tell what’s happening from the national figure but that dip in April 2021 is not looking good so far.

One benefit from unstable fuel prices is that it builds the economic case for cement producers to raise their alternative fuels substitution rates. UltraTech Cement, for example, reported that its ‘green’ energy rate grew to 13% in its 2021 financial year from 11% in 2020. With a target of 34% by its 2024 financial year, this is an ideal opportunity for a change for both UltraTech Cement and other producers.

Nepal: A report by the Nepal Rastra Bank has estimated that Nepal will require 26Mt/yr of cement by the 2024 – 25 financial year due to large-scale infrastructure projects. However, current production before the coronavirus pandemic was around 7.5Mt/yr despite the country’s production capacity of 15Mt/yr, according to the Kathmandu Post newspaper. Domestic consumption is 9Mt with around 1.5Mt of demand supplied from imports, mainly from India. The report added that most of the large projects in Nepal used cement imported from India due to issues with certification, consistent quality and the inability of local producers to offer bulk supply. In 2019 the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies forecast that the country’s cement production capacity could increase to 20Mt/yr by the end of the 2023 – 24 year.

Dhruba Raj Thapa, president of the Cement Manufacturers Association of Nepal, said that the data in the report by the bank contained errors. He pointed out that the country has a cement production capacity of 22Mt/yr and that it is already self-sufficient in the commodity. He also refuted the claims that infrastructure projects prefer imported cement.

India: Cement demand will drop by an estimated 20% year-on-year in the three months up to 30 June 2021, the first quarter of the 2022 financial year in India. Credit rating agency Fitch Ratings has attributed the projected decrease to a significant drop in rural housing’s bagged cement uptake due to state governments’ coronavirus lockdowns, which prevent retailers from opening. The Hindu newspaper has reported that this type of construction previously generated one third of demand. Segments such as urban housing, commercial construction and infrastructure will be less affected, according to the forecast.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not yet implemented a national lockdown in response to the country’s second wave of coronavirus. New cases numbered 264,000 on 17 May 2021, down by 20% week-on-week from 330,000 on 10 May 2021.

Vietnam: SSI Research has predicted that Vietnamese cement exports will not grow in 2021. The reason for this is the expected stabilisation of China’s domestic cement supply, which is forecast to increase its share of the market. The Viet Nam News newspaper has reported that China accounts for 57% of Vietnamese cement and clinker exports. Other factors restricting export growth are safeguard duties in Bangladesh and the Philippines and the Vietnam government’s mandatory minimum domestic sales regulations, variously between 65% and 70% of total output.