DECEMBER KEY FIGURES

			Sep Qtr 18 to Dec Qtr 18	Dec Qtr 17 to Dec Qtr 18
			%	%
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-0.9	-1.7
		Seasonally Adjusted	-1.0	-1.2
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	0.1	-0.2
		Seasonally Adjusted	0.1	0.4
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.0	1.2
	Seasonally Adjusted		-0.2	1.0
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		0.9	9.6
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.8	10.5
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.8	4.1

Inventories (volume terms), Trend estimates

Company gross operating profits, Trend estimates

DECEMBER KEY POINTS


CHAIN VOLUME ESTIMATES

• The trend estimate for inventories remained relatively unchanged in the December quarter 2018. The seasonally adjusted estimate fell 0.2% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Manufacturing sales of goods and services fell 0.9% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate fell 1.0% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Wholesale trade sales of goods and services rose 0.1 this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 0.1%.

CURRENT PRICE ESTIMATES

• The seasonally adjusted estimate for company gross operating profits rose 0.8% in the December quarter 2018.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for wages and salaries rose 0.8% in the December quarter 2018.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
March 2019	3 June 2019
June 2019	2 September 2019
September 2019	2 December 2019
December 2019	2 March 2020

COMPARISON BETWEEN COMPANY GROSS OPERATING PROFITS AND GROSS OPERATING SURPLUS

Valuation changes have had an impact on the value of inventories held by Australian businesses this quarter. An inventories valuation adjustment (IVA) is applied in the calculation of the gross operating surplus of private non-financial corporations (GOS) estimate in the Australian National Accounts. The IVA for the December quarter 2018 is $1,659m which is $264m lower than the September quarter 2018 IVA of $1,923m.

No adjustment is made to the company gross operating profits (CGOP) estimate in this publication and, as a result, users should exercise caution when comparing CGOP and GOS. It should be noted that there are other differences between the two series. In particular, changes are made to GOS when annual benchmarks are applied and slightly different seasonal factors apply to the two series. Given this, while CGOP movements are an appropriate indicator for GOS, the two series will not have equivalent seasonally adjusted movements from quarter to quarter.


CESSATION OF A PDF PRODUCT

The ABS intends to cease publishing a PDF as part of the release of ABS cat. no. 5676.0 Business Indicators, Australia. All of the information that is contained in the PDF will continue to be available elsewhere in this release.

The March quarter 2019 issue, released in June 2019, is expected to be the final release with a PDF. Should you have any concerns regarding this transition, please contact us at client.services@abs.gov.au.


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