March key figures

			Dec Qtr 18 to Mar Qtr 19	Mar Qtr 18 to Mar Qtr 19
			%	%
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-1.1	-3.4
		Seasonally Adjusted	-1.4	-4.3
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	0.7	1.2
		Seasonally Adjusted	1.0	0.8
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.2	1.0
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.7	1.4
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		2.0	8.8
	Seasonally Adjusted		1.7	7.8
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		1.1	4.4

Inventories (volume terms), Trend estimates

Company gross operating profits, Trend estimates

March key points


Chain volume estimates

• The trend estimate for inventories rose 0.2% in the March quarter 2019. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 0.7% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Manufacturing sales of goods and services fell 1.1% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate fell 1.4% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Wholesale trade sales of goods and services rose 0.7% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 1.0%.

Current prices estimates

• The seasonally adjusted estimate for company gross operating profits rose 1.7% in the March quarter 2019.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for wages and salaries rose 1.1% in the March quarter 2019.

Notes

Forthcoming issues

Issue (quarter)	Release Date
June 2019	2 September 2019
September 2019	2 December 2019
December 2019	2 March 2020
March 2020	2 June 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 March quarter 2019 is $634m which is $1,025m lower than the December quarter 2018 IVA of $1,659m.

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. An annual seasonal reanalysis was conducted for Business Indicators, Australia in March 2019. As a result, revisions will be seen in the seasonally adjusted and trend estimates for some series including CGOP.


Cessation of a PDF product

The ABS will 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 current release, the March quarter 2019 issue, is the final release with a PDF. Should you have any concerns regarding this transition, please contact us at client.services@abs.gov.au.


Inquiries

Inquiries about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070. The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to us.