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Business Inventories Apr Mar ! Consensus: !
Total Inventories +0.4% +0.3% ! +0.3% !
Inventory/Sales Ratio 1.26 1.26r ! Actual: !
! +0.4% !
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By Tom Barkley and Jeffrey Sparshott
WASHINGTON--U.S. business inventories rose in April, as companies were
left holding more goods in warehouses and stockrooms amid sluggish
sales.
Inventories increased by 0.4% to a seasonally adjusted $1.575
trillion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The gain was
slightly above expectations for a 0.3% rise among economists surveyed
by Dow Jones Newswires.
Sales rose a modest 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted $1.250 trillion.
March inventories had registered a 0.3% increase, with a downwardly
revised 0.2% gain in sales that month.
Inventories barely contributed to growth during the first quarter,
after a big buildup late in the year provided a boost to the recovery.
They accounted for just 0.2 percentage point of the 1.9% rise in gross
domestic product in the first three months of the year.
Companies are unlikely to pick up the pace of stockpiling until there
are signs of increasing consumer demand, which is looking less likely
in the near term given that the unemployment rate remains stubbornly
high. Earlier Wednesday, Commerce reported a 0.2% decrease in retail
sales for May, following a similar decline the previous month--the
first back-to-back drop in nearly two years.
The inventory report showed that retailers boosted stockpiles by 0.6%
in April, in part due to a 0.3% drop in sales.
Motor vehicle and parts inventories increased 1.9%. Excluding the auto
sector, retail inventories were up 0.1%.
Manufacturing inventories were flat in April, while wholesalers'
stockpiles grew 0.6% during the month.
The inventory report showed that the amount of goods on hand relative
to sales remained at a relatively lean 1.26 in April--matching the
lowest level of the year. The inventory-to-sales ratio measures how
many months it would take for a firm to deplete its current inventory.
The Commerce Department data on business inventories can be found at
http://www.census.gov/mtis/www/data/pdf/mtis_current.pdf.
Write to Tom Barkley at tom.barkley@dowjones.com and Jeffrey Sparshott
at jeffrey.sparshott@dowjones.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 13, 2012 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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