Factory & Manufacturing Data, Mixed to ‘Less-Bad’

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated May 1, 1:12PM EDT · Published May 1, 9:16AM EDT

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The Institute for Supply Management released its manufacturing data for April and we also saw March Factory Orders. The April data from the ISM looks favorable compared with March and to the consensus estimates. The March data from factories is older and was back when we were still barely past the stage of staring into the abyss.

The ISM data for manufacturing came in at a reading of 40.1%. This is up from the 36.3% reading in March and above a Bloomberg consensus estimate of 38.3%. At a break-even level of 50 representing growth versus contraction, this marks the 15th consecutive month of no growth, and the overall economy contracted for the seventh consecutive month. But it is not all bad as the New Orders Index came in at 47.2%. Even the prices paid grew marginally to 32.0 from 31.0 in March.

Factory orders showed a drop of -0.9%, but keep in mind that this is almost a month older than the data from the ISM. We had a consensus estimate of -0.5% for March factory orders. Since that is now a month old and we have seen so many manufacturing and factory companies report earnings and offer 2009 guidance, that is about all the coverage we are going to spend on that topic.

The data is still mixed. While the common theme here is still a contraction, it keeps feeling like a slower contraction. If you are willing to invest at the time that you keep getting ‘less-bad’ data and when you see a contraction in the rate of change in these numbers, then the last few weeks keep confirming these trends.

JON C. OGG

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.