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If there is lack of demand due to china weakness there will be impact to feedstock isn't it ?
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Extract from latest results comments:
The Group has in recent months noticed that our business partners have held back or slowdown
the award of new works. New works that come on stream are awarded at lower
prices causing a squeeze on profit margins. Strong competition among key service
providers, due to shortage of works, has caused profit margins to deteriorate.
The Group will continue its efforts to pursue business opportunities, both domestically and
in regional markets, to diversify and widen both the customer and revenue base. Such
initiatives include strategic investment opportunities to enhance its range of services and
products. However, these initiatives take time to bear fruits.
Seems like it doesn't matter up or down stream... a tsunami is approaching with competition intensifying...
Frankly even downstream will be affected as a result of poor demand for products... lower feedstock costs will help to ease margin compression for downstream plants but with the high fixed costs associated with such production facilities, it is only logical to assume that high volume of lower priced end products will be required to cover fixed costs of downstream plants and hence the shrinking works being handed down by these producers.
Anyway, such service engineering cos are small and cyclical players... if they can be big players, they would have been big long time ago.
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The key is how much increase in economic activities due to low price VS TRUE economic strength to demand for the raw material which is more sustainable.