Anglia’s CEO, Steve Rawlins, is preparing for a market upturn in 2025 by building inventory six months in advance.
Don’t get me wrong: times are tough and anyone who tells you different is misguided. And I think it’ll continue to be difficult until Q2 2025 at least. But I don’t think it’s a recession. There’s just a huge amount of inventory in the channel—with distributors and customers—which was forced into the market by manufacturers in response to an expected boom in EV sales. Now, of course, EV sales have slowed, although I am sure they will recover. But that inventory is still there and the consensus among our suppliers is that it’ll be another six months before it is through.
Then, inevitably there will be shortages and extended lead times again as we enter into another upcycle. We’ve all seen it before—many times if you’ve been in business like Anglia for 50 years. The difference now is that the five or six big corporate distributors who can influence what the manufacturers themselves do, act and even describe themselves not as electronics distributors, but logistics businesses. Their actions are taken in the interests of their shareholders, which is not necessarily the same as the customers.
That is why Anglia has a vital role to play. We hold stock—we are currently preparing for the upturn by building our inventory six months in advance of when we believe that to be. This is a gamble that stock-market-driven corporations are not allowed to take.
We believe the market will recover in 2025 but only by around five to 10 per cent.