Hints Of Business Coming Back In Latest AVIXA COVID-19 Impact Survey

May 9, 2020 by Dave Haynes

There are hints of business starting to turn around in the most recent Pro AV industry Impact Survey put out by the trade association AVIXA.

One survey respondent said POs tripled In April over the March number.

More broadly, the weekly survey of 100s of industry people says: 

• Overall sentiment is in a third week of plateau, though revenues continue to be under negative pressure.
• Companies are starting to see a bright side, with upticks in project resumption and inquiries.
• It appears that to date, most companies have opted for furloughs over layoffs, possibly indicating plans for a quick restart.
• AV providers tell stories of careful planning so that as they start working on projects, their employees will be safe.

Reports AVIXA:

In the latest AVIXA COVID-19 Impact Survey, fielded May 5-6, 70% of AV providers and 58% of end users said the pandemic had a negative impact on their companies last week. Those numbers have gradually ticked down since AVIXA Market Intelligence began fielding the survey, although that 70% share of AV providers saying their businesses had a rough week is flat. Overall, the percentage of AV providers perceiving negative impact peaked April 2 at 88%; the share of end users citing negative impact rocketed to 83% right out of the gate, holding at that staggering figure March 20 and 27.

Regardless of sentiment, the longer that economies have remained closed, the more drawn-out the effect on business. In this most recent survey, of AV providers feeling a negative impact from COVID-19, 75% said they’d seen a decline in revenue — the highest that figure has stood since the survey began — and 71% cited slowing sales.

Note: These figures are only for respondents who said their businesses had been impacted negatively. In light of those negative-impact figures plateauing or ticking down, AVIXA Market Intelligence will begin taking weighted averages of all respondents, of which about 44% of all AV providers surveyed said their companies had seen declining revenue and 41% reported slowing sales. Such analysis will allow us to better gauge any recovery in the weeks ahead.

Some of the nuggets come from individual comments:

“New RFPs continue to be issued and new projects continue to be awarded,” said one AV provider. “We’ve had only three projects put on hold because of COVID-19, and two of those are cruise ship related.”

According to another AV provider, “We’ve reached a new version of working. Projects are still being completed, though sales are down. Fortunately, we had enough coming in when this started that we’re good through at least the end of the year. One smart thing about mixing big projects with smaller ones: The variety is saving us.”

Said one AV provider reporting from Asia-Pacific, “Whilst some of our installation work has slowed to a trickle, we have been receiving more requests for design work and have five new staff in technical project coordination roles who commenced working for us over the past 10 days. We still have another two roles that we are yet to fill and are actively recruiting. We are beginning to see some early optimistic signs for the industry in the Asia-Pacific region, with an increase in RFQs for work to begin in the second half of the calendar year.”

The full report is here: https://www.avixa.org/en/insight/Articles/Details/getting-back-to-the-business-of-pro-av-safely