Coatings World - January 2013

The Architectural
Coatings Market

Recovery in the housing market and an improving economy offer bright spots for architectural coatings manufacturers.

Kerry Pianoforte, Editor

Architectural coatings manufacturers Coatings World spoke with reported that overall, 2012 showed improve- ments in sales and demand. Several factors have contributed to this increased demand, including an improvement in the U.S. housing market and overall economy.

“The interior architectural coatings market has shown a
positive upward trend through 2012 as the housing market
and economy are starting to recover,” said Sean Morris, brand
manager at Valspar. “This recovery is giving consumers more
confidence in investing in new home purchases and home im-
provement projects such as painting. We foresee this upward
trend continuing through 2013.”
“The third quarter was a solid quarter for Sherwin-Williams
in terms of both sales and profit improvement,” Chris Connor,
chairman and CEO, The Sherwin-Williams Company said at
a recent Q3 earnings call. “Consolidated sales increased al-
most five percent, despite soft market conditions and currency
headwinds across most of our non-domestic markets. We also
had to overcome the diminishing effect from last year’s price in-
creases and a strong revenue growth comparison from the third
quarter of last year. Despite that, many of the financial metrics,
notably the $2.6 billion in sales for the quarter, $235 million in
net income and $2.24 earnings per share, are high-water marks
for any quarter in our company’s history. Year to date, our flow-
through on operating income is over 31 percent.”
“To date, paint and coatings demand in our domestic busi-
nesses has been resilient,” continued Connor. “We remain opti-
mistic that U.S. architectural paint market volumes, primarily
in the residential segments, will remain positive in the fourth
quarter of 2012 and well beyond. And domestic demand for
most industrial coatings will continue to expand. Our outlook
for fourth quarter 2012 is for consolidated net sales to increase
in the mid-single digits compared to last year’s fourth quarter.”
Kelly-Moore Paints reported sales improvements across all