Associazione Distributori e Noleggiatori di Beni Strumentali

ERA/IRN RentalTracker: A stable start

 The year has started on a somewhat downbeat note, according to respondents to the first quarter ERA/IRN RentalTracker survey, with optimism slipping across Europe on all questions.

ERA/IRN RentalTracker: A stable start

The year has started on a somewhat downbeat note, according to respondents to the first quarter ERA/IRN RentalTracker survey, with optimism slipping across Europe on all questions.

 Nevertheless, the majority of respondents report steady business conditions – answering ‘stable’ or ‘no change’ to the survey questions. This has often been the case with previous surveys too.

Indeed, this trend reflects wider economic conditions across Europe. In fact, the International Monetary Fund has labelled slowing growth in advanced economies ‘the new normal’.

As a result of this shift towards less dramatic trends, the ERA/IRN RentalTracker survey (which is jointly organised by IRN and the European Rental Association) will no longer take place every quarter, and instead will be presented twice a year – see box story for the full details.

There were around 80 respondents to the first quarter questionnaire, still enough to highlight general trends, but not enough to present meaningful results for every country or region. For example, we are unable to present results for the Benelux this quarter.

The statistics for multinational companies should also be treated with a degree of caution because of the small size of the data set as well.
 

Overall dip


That said, the overall impression from respondents was a dip in confidence, with the balance of opinion (the difference in the percentage of respondents seeing positive and negative trends)  on business conditions at the end of the first quarter dropping to +18%, compared to +34% for the final three months of 2015.

French respondents came in at the low end of the ranking, with a negative balance of -22% compared to +5% in the last survey, while German respondents came out on top at +43%, albeit lower than the balance of +56% produced for the same question in the last survey.

And there was a dramatic swing when it came to sentiment from multinationals on current conditions – with a balance of +34%, compared to +83% in the last survey. Again, please note these results are from a smaller sample.

But the majority of overall respondents (43%) said that they felt business conditions were stable – a central trend throughout the survey, as we have discussed.

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