Sales Still Up, but Confidence is Slipping

“Our industry still isn’t gaining any traction,” notes the latest edition of NAPL’s Printing Business Conditions, reporting that sales did rise for the second quarter, but remain down slightly for the first half of 2012. “We’ve been witnessing this up-and-down pattern for two years now.”

The latest report (PDF) indicates that more members of the NAPL Printing Business Panel are seeing pre-tax profitability increase (31.9 percent in August 2012, compared to 24.3 percent in January 2012), but fewer expect business to improve over the next six months—only 18.7 percent in August, almost half of the 36.6 percent that expected improvement