Wire and Cable Operating Rates Continued to Pull Back This Week; Weak Demand to Keep Next Week’s Operating Rates Trending Lower [SMM Wire and Cable Market Weekly Review]

This week (Aug 7-Aug 13), the SMM operating rate for copper wire and cable enterprises came in at 62.25%, down 1.4 percentage points WoW and down 7.05 percentage points YoY. During the week, copper prices stayed high, continuing to curb downstream purchasing appetite. Coupled with overall weak end-user orders, the demand side saw no substantive improvement, and industry production loads continued to decline. Inventory side, constrained by high copper prices, wire and cable enterprises generally adopted just-in-time procurement strategies, only locking in prices and purchasing small volumes to replenish stocks when copper prices saw slight corrections; raw material inventory edged down 0.49% WoW. To ease inventory pressure, downstream enterprises prioritized drawing down finished product inventories, which fell 2.33% WoW. Looking ahead to next week, the weak demand pattern across segments is unlikely to reverse, and the industry lacks short-term recovery momentum. Under the dual pressure of high copper prices and off-season demand, SMM expects the copper wire and cable operating rate to fall by a further 1.18 percentage points WoW to 61.08% next week (Aug 14-Aug 20), down 7.8 percentage points YoY.