Don Charron
Analyst · Gabelli Funds
That’s a good question. With the quarter we just finished, it seemed like the part shortages just spread across all verticals and all product categories. It was hard to find an example where there were no part shortages, really, as we exited the September ending quarter, Hendi, it’s really across the board. I think some may take longer to recover. I believe the automotive vertical overall has probably experienced the longest period of shortages as a vertical. And there are some sort of reasons why that is the case. I won’t go into those. But the fact that they have been at it longer means they have been working longer at the real solutions, getting at the real sort of root causes and the real solutions. And so I think that we will see how that vertical recovers. And I think the other part of that story was automotive, because I think those OEMs, those carmakers had to make harder decisions about shutdowns than other verticals. And what I mean by harder decision about shutdown. I mean there is sort of unprecedented consecutive days, in a row of car plants being down. And even amongst the most popular nameplates and brands in the world, they have almost all had to announce some reduction in their production plants and in some sort of shutdown of their car making plants. And I think that they were very careful and thoughtful about how they did that. And so as those car plants are coming back online and running, building cars at the levels they were intended to build that their – with that recovery we will see. That recovery, I think is going to get some more traction here as we go into the January, February timeframe, provided again that the pandemic doesn’t come at us again with a new variant and the new infection rate. I think it seems like that’s structurally ready to happen. Inventory levels are very low. I think carmakers are going to be willing to build up those inventory levels, because the demand is there. And so I expect even after the supply to catch up to demand on the component side, it’s not only just the run rate of the market, it’s replenishing inventory levels there. So, that one for me is looking a little bit different than, let’s say, the medical vertical, which we are also very bullish on. It’s an important part of our growth plans going forward and restricted by components, but also restricted in other areas outside of components side. We mentioned again, elective procedures, elective surgeries and really maybe a better term would be scheduled procedures. I think McKinsey did a study not too long ago, talking about the backlog of these elective procedures that was created by the pandemic. And I think over 1 million, the number they estimated over 1 million surgeries didn’t happen that should have happened, and how do you catch up on that given the capacity of healthcare here in the U.S., for example, doctors, facilities, hospitals, other healthcare workers, how fast can they get back to pre-pandemic levels and how can they get above that to work down that – the number of patients who just simply didn’t get that care during the pandemic. That might be gated on that side of the recovery plan. And in other words, parts could catch up. But our customers, and we are in the value chains of several of those medical customers, the Stryker or J&J or Smith & Nephew. We are in their value chain. So, at least we have got insights into what they are thinking about and how they are planning a recovery of sorts. But that – again, that could be gated on how fast that backlog can be made up along with part shortages. So, just a couple of different examples there, overall, I think though, it’s the whole supply chain, the disruption, the shortages is wide enough. I can’t really speak definitively about one vertical getting better faster than the other.