A Likely End Game to Hostility

The hard disk drive business has been a lousy place to compete for nearly twenty-five years.  It has been the graveyard of many competitors.  Twenty years ago, there were eighty disk drive manufacturers.  By the mid-90s, there were only fifteen.  By 2001, there were eight, and today it appears there are only four.  But the fact that we are at four competitors, especially the size of the leading competitors, means that the industry is likely to come out of its recurring bouts of overcapacity and hostility. 

As 2011 began, there were five hard disk drive manufacturers.  Western Digital led the market with a 31% market share, followed closely by Seagate with a 29% market share.  Hitachi enjoyed an 18% market share, while Samsung and Toshiba shared the remaining 22% of the market.  Recently, Western Digital agreed to purchase Hitachi.  This acquisition would bring Western Digital’s potential market share to 49%.  The top two of the remaining four competitors would then have a potential market share of 78%.  The top three would have more than 85% of the market. 

Hitachi was not just any other competitor in the market.  It had a well deserved reputation for being the most aggressive price discounter in the market.  Hitachi was the major reason that pricing stayed under pressure in the hard disk market.  Western Digital’s acquisition removed the major discounter.

In the past, acquisitions among the hard disk drive manufacturers brought somewhat better margins to the remaining players, but not as much market share as the acquisition would suggest.  The reason was customers rotating other strong suppliers into their relationships to maintain low prices.  With only four players left, and a dominant leader in the market, there is little purpose for the three followers to discount against Western Digital.  A discounter might pick up some temporary share in a market saturated with “last look” arrangements, but it might face a very aggressive pricing response by one or both of the remaining leaders in the market.  No, rather than discount, the economics for all the players would argue for firm industry pricing.  That is the most likely outcome of this acquisition.

Over the years, we have studied many industries in overcapacity.  Overcapacity produces a hostile market, where returns are low and price competition remains intense.  These kinds of markets end in one of two ways, either demand picks up and sops up the industry’s overcapacity, or the industry consolidates to the point where the top four competitors control 85% or more of the industry’s volume.  The remaining players then demur from competitive price discounts. The majority of industries see demand growth pull them out of hostile conditions.

There is one potential fly in this hard disk ointment.  Computer tablets and other portable devices don’t use hard disk drives.  Instead, they use NAND flash drives.  These are solid state drives.  They are more expensive than hard disks, have a much smaller form factor and are generally more reliable.  Samsung, Toshiba and SanDisk are the leaders in this market.  It could happen that Samsung and Toshiba, two of the four remaining hard disk drive suppliers, use low prices in the hard disk market to create customers for their more expensive flash drives.  It is more likely, however, that these two companies, who are distant followers in the hard disk market, would prefer to see higher prices for hard disks.  These higher prices on a competitive product would help some customers in the market transfer alliance to flash drives.

This acquisition should be a good deal for the remaining four hard disk players.  While some analysts have argued that the hard disk drive market will slowly die under the pressure of the growth in the applications of flash drives, industry observers still see an 8% per annum unit growth for this market over the next five years.  That unit growth should come with better margins for the remaining players.

The Long and Arduous Journey of the Airline Industry May be Reaching an End

The government deregulated the airline industry in 1978. Since that time, the basic pricing in the industry, as well as airline fortunes, have been more or less continuously on the downward slope. It has been a very long trip down.

The industry may be heading up again, though. In the third quarter of 2010, the average domestic airfare was 11% higher than a year earlier. Profits returned to the industry in 2010 behind higher prices. In some part, these higher prices were the result of the additional fees that most of the domestic carriers charged passengers for checked baggage, better seating, rerouting and so forth. Still, the industry was able to hold its higher prices.

These prices are holding because the major industry players are less enamored of discounted flying. All of the big airlines are finding ways to extract prices from industry customers. Now that airline capacity utilization is high, the industry is more careful about capacity additions. Higher prices are here to stay.

The consumer still is far ahead. Even at these higher prices, ticket prices are a bargain. In fact, ticket prices, adjusted for inflation, are 20% below the levels of 1995. The industry has continuously stripped benefits from the base product in order to save costs. In 2010, the industry added back a few of those benefits (for example, economy plus seating) for an additional charge. We may see more of that over the next few years.

How Hostility Starts

Many years ago, I had the good fortune of living in London for three years. During that time, I would often have lunch in one of London’s many public houses, “pubs” to you and me. They served rich and ample fare such as shephard’s pie, sliced turkey sandwiches and, of course, English “bitter.” Sometimes, after work, I would meet friends for a drink at the same pubs. When I traveled the countryside, I could always rely on a local pub to provide good food and drinks at reasonable prices. They were a more comfortable equivalent of a fast food restaurant. And they were great places to socialize.

Things have changed. A couple of years ago, my wife and I spent a vacation in England. I was anxious to take her to some of my favorite pubs, both while we were in London and while we were in the Cotswolds. To my surprise, most of these pubs were gone. Those that had survived had largely transformed themselves into much more upscale restaurants. Gone were the gorgonzola sandwiches and the cheddar and bread offerings. In their place were white tablecloths and nice silverware settings.

The public house is under significant pressure in Britain. The number of pubs has fallen by 10% in just the last five years. What happened? New competition.

Competition, both above and below pub prices, has reduced the market for pubs. At the lower end of the market, supermarkets easily undercut pub prices with their substantial buying power. At the higher end, the British have expanded their taste for wine. All of this new competition has reduced the sales of beer, the pub’s key product.

This is a picture of the development of a hostile market, where price competition is intense and returns for the industry are often low. A reduction in the number of competitors is a hallmark of a difficult, hostile market. We have studied many of those markets over the last twenty-five years. Most hostile markets are caused by the expansion of competition. The minority examples of hostility are the result of a fall-off in demand. The British pub industry has seen both factors at work. But the most pressing has been the expansion of competition.

For a relatively short summary of how to operate in a hostile market, see these two Perspectives: “Success Under Fire: Policies to Prosper in Hostile Times” and “Use Subtle Strategy in Tough Markets."

Discounts - Much Greater Than Most Assume

Recently, we did an extensive analysis of various forms of price reductions and discounts. In particular, we were interested in seeing how big discounts tended to be. Across roughly 850 instances of discounts, we found that the median discount was 25%. 75% of all discounts were 10% or greater.

Discounts in distressed markets are often much higher. Numerous examples reside in Florida condominiums. This market grew far too fast for demand and then collapsed quickly. Retail prices for condominiums there have fallen from 30% to 40% off their peak prices. If you are a big buyer, one capable of doing a bulk purchase, discounts are even larger. In one example, a condominium project had a cost of $340 per square foot to build. The complex had 375 luxury units which sat in bankruptcy. A developer bought 165 units at an auction sale at a price of $126 a square foot. That works out to a 63% discount on the cost of new building. (See StrategyStreet.com/Improve/Pricing/Reduce Price)

For comparison purposes, the median customer who is able to purchase a large package of a product buys that product at a discount of about 30% off of the retail price. 75% of these types of purchases have discount equal to or greater than 20%.

Service Levels Go Up, Not Down, in Hostility

A market in overcapacity is hostile. Surprisingly, in a hostile market service levels to customers go up, not down. (See “Video #36: Probable Priorities for Innovation in Hostile Markets” on StrategyStreet.com.) The airline industry is an example. The airline industry has been hostile virtually from the day it was deregulated in 1978 until today. During that time, the industry has made great strides in reducing its costs and increasing its service levels at the same time.

Here are some interesting statistics that bear out this contention. These statistics compare the airline industry in 1969 to that of 2009. In 1969, 172 million passengers flew U.S. Airlines. By 2009, that number had grown to 770 million. In 1969, there were 5.4 million flights. By 2009, the flight numbers had risen to 10.1 million. Service levels, as measured by number of flights and number of passengers, clearly have risen over the last forty years. During that time, safety clearly improved. Fatal accidents per 100,000 departures were 1.3 in 1969 and .1 by 2009. Pricing dropped as well, because costs dropped. In 2009, it cost a passenger 14 cents to fly one mile. The comparable number in 1969, using 2009 dollars, was 34 cents. Today you can get to more places faster by airliner than you could in 1969. Service levels have risen.

Naturally, those of us who fly would complain that service levels in terms of comfort have fallen drastically. Meals used to be free and there used to be ample space for knees and luggage. Those days seem to have passed...or have they?

The airlines have learned time and again that customers will not pay for onboard meals and more leg room. However, those customers who are willing to pay for more comfort can fly in economy plus or business class or first class. The prices for these services today are much lower than they were several years ago. So no matter how you slice it, service levels have risen in the industry when you look at the service levels for which customers are willing to pay.

The same holds true in every hostile industry. (See “Video #37: Performance Innovation Tradeoffs in Hostility” on StrategyStreet.com.)

Here We Go Again

The leader of the United Auto Workers is retiring. He is leaving a union under siege. By 2009, UAW membership was about half of the level of 1995. The union has hemorrhaged members as the big three domestic automobile producers have shrunk in market share, lost billions of dollars, and closed plants.

The departing leader of the UAW claims that the industry’s difficulties never rested with the union and its rich contracts. In his view, the crisis that led to the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler and the near bankruptcy of Ford was strictly the result of an unexpected spike in gas prices and a recession that resulted from the mortgage crisis. He believes that the fault lay not with the union and not with the industry. Following this belief, he is encouraging his successor to begin clawing back the cost-cutting concessions that the union has granted the Detroit big three domestic automobile manufacturers now that these companies are moving toward profitable operations.

The problem is that these concessions did not do enough, at least from the results they seem to have produced. The concessions really got underway in 2003, as the union reduced its wages and benefits and transferred retiree healthcare costs from the automakers to an independent trust. Despite these concessions, union membership fell parabolically from 2003 to 2009, right along with the profits in the big three. In the meantime, German and Asian manufacturers continued to be profitable. These profits included profits in U.S. domestic manufacturing facilities as well. (See the Symptom & Implication, “Some industry leaders have lower returns than the smaller competitors” on StrategyStreet.com.)

The union is heading back to trouble and will take its unionized facilities with them. In an earlier blog (See Blog HERE), we described the hourly cost differences in wage rates between a unionized and non-unionized domestic facility. These cost differences are unsustainable in the longer term. No one can expect that an automobile plant with $73 dollar an hour labor will be profitable enough to compete with another domestic plant producing similar automobiles at $48 an hour. Despite recent troubles, the Asian manufacturers still command a premium price over their big three competitors for their products. So, Toyota and Honda get a higher price and produce with a lower costs. (See “Video #1: The Two Best Consultants in the World” on StrategyStreet.com.) Tell me how GM, Chrysler and Ford can produce an equivalent or better car with these economic conditions. The claw-backs will only make things worse.

Pricing Flexibility

Monsanto is the dominant leader in the seed business. It has led in the development of genetically modified seeds for corn, soy beans and cotton. This spring, the company introduced new second generation versions of its herbicide tolerant soy bean line and its herbicide and pest resistant corn seed. The company expected to sell enough of the soy bean line to plant 8 to 10 million acres and enough of the corn line to plant 4 million acres. Instead, the farmers bought 6 million acres worth of the soy bean line and 3 million acres worth of the corn line. The overall demand for seeds was down somewhat due to the depressed economy, but DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred seed line also gained share against Monsanto.

The problem Monsanto encountered went beyond the economy. It simply priced the new lines too high for the market. The new soy bean line cost 42% more than its predecessor. The new corn line 17% more than its predecessor. The company simply did not leave enough incentive for enough farmers to make the switch to hit the company’s volume targets. (See “Audio Tip #68: Producing a Net Value Improvement for Customers” on StrategyStreet.com.)

The company responded quickly. After watching the market make a shambles of its volume forecasts, it announced that it would reduce its pricing by enough to increase its market share again.

This speedy response by a company in the marketplace stands in stark contrast to our governmental response to high pricing. If governments set a price too high, both consumers and the suppliers suffer. Current examples are the government interventions in the market to fix minimum wages and to increase taxes on employment.

In simple terms, the government sets a minimum wage price that is generally above the price that some employers are willing to pay. This new price, whether a minimum wage or an additional tax on employment, depresses demand for employees at the same time as it raises the potential supply. In a market where there is already more supply than demand, this is a prescription for a great deal of pain for both employees and employers. Some employers will shift jobs to less expensive areas of the world or simply not do them. Some employees will simply not find work. In particular, the employees least likely to find work are those with the lowest levels of skills, primarily the young and uneducated.

Throughout the post-war period, Europe created a cradle-to-grave system of social protections. They financed these social protections with high tax rates, charges on employment, and restrictions on the ability of an employer to reduce its workforce. At the end of 2009, Europe faced high employment rates for its young people. Belgium, France, Italy, the U.K., Sweden and Finland had rates of unemployment for people under 25 around 20% to 30%. The U.S. is now approaching the same level. Its unemployment rate for workers under 25 is about 20%, while overall unemployment rate is around 10%. The unemployment rate among black teenage males is 50%.

Not all of this high unemployment will go away with the reduction in the cost of employment. Some of our unemployed youth simply must have training they do not have today. But we show no signs today of recognizing what our high cost employment system has done to the demand for our youngest potential employees. It is too bad that our politicians don’t measure success in market share terms. Monsanto does and reverses course. Our response, if it ever comes, will be very late. (See "Video #41: Pricing Considerations in Hostile Markets” on StrategyStreet.com.)

New Capacity in a Shrinking Market

Big companies are pulling out of the petroleum refining industry. In the last year, Shell, Chevron, Valero and Sunoco have put refineries up for sale or shut them down. There is simply too much capacity in the industry. But there seems to be one guy coming in through the exit doors in the refining industry. Marathon Oil just opened a new $4 billion addition to its Louisiana refinery. Further, the company announced that it made a profit in all six of its other refineries in the U.S. in 2009. 2009 was a terrible year for the U.S. refinery business. 2010 isn’t much better.

Why would anyone add capacity in a hostile market with clear overcapacity? These capacity additions turn out to be commonplace. (See “Audio Tip #103: Capacity Creep Expansion of Industry Capacity” on StrategyStreet.com.) In Marathon’s case, the company started its capacity expansion in 2007, while the refining industry was roaring along. It simply took until 2010 to bring the refinery addition online. So this addition, while large, is really the result of expansion in the good times. The new capacity shows up when times have turned bad.

But, virtually every hostile industry sees small amounts, at least 1% to 2% per annum, increases in industry capacity every year. This capacity addition is the result of companies learning how to run their existing capacity with greater efficiency and effectiveness. It is almost a free addition to industry capacity. We call this annual capacity addition, despite overcapacity, the learning curve capacity addition. We named it after the well-known Boston Consulting Group strategic concept from the early 70s. The rate of this free capacity addition depends, in part, on the rate of growth in the industry itself. The faster the industry grows, the more free capacity will come online each year due to this learning curve effect. This effect can be pernicious. In the newsprint industry, the learning curve effect added more capacity every year than demand in the newsprint industry grew. During most of the 90s, the capacity industry’s addition due to the learning curve effect outstripped the growth of industry demand. Every year, hostility got just a little worse because of it. Real prices remained under pressure the whole time. (See “Audio Tip #133: What Tells Us Prices Will be Under Pressure?” on StrategyStreet.com.)

Recycling of Capacity in a Tough Market

Sweden is a small country with a proud tradition of producing tough, high-end, automobiles. We call these high-end products Performance Leaders. In a hostile market, a Performance Leader usually suffers from scale disadvantages compared to the much larger industry leaders, whom we call Standard Leaders. Often, these Performance Leaders become acquisitions for the industry’s Standard Leaders. (See the Symptom & Implication, “The industry is consolidating through mergers and acquisitions” on StrategyStreet.com.) That was the case when GM bought Saab and Ford bought Volvo.

Both of these automobile industry Standard Leaders operated their Swedish acquisitions as separate companies. However, as GM and Ford themselves faltered in the market, they both decided to jettison their foreign high-end products. Spyker Cars NV, a Dutch company, has purchased Saab from General Motors. China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. has purchased Volvo from Ford. Both the Saab and the Volvo brands, then, will continue into the future.

These purchases illustrate the sometimes difficult workings of a hostile marketplace. (See “Video #10: Industry Consolidation and Recycling of Capacity” on StrategyStreet.com.) Both Volvo and Saab were failing as stand-alone Performance Leader competitors. But they did not go out of business. Instead, larger industry Standard Leaders bought them and kept their capacity in operation. This is a first example of the recycling of brands, but more particularly, productive capacity in an industry that already had too much of it. Neither GM nor Ford was able to make a go of it with these Performance Leader brands. Rather than shut the brands and their productive capacity down, however, both the Standard Leaders found willing buyers for the brands and their industry capacity. This is the second example of recycling of the same capacity. In each case, the buyer got the company and its capacity for a cost below the book value of the original seller.

We have found this recycling of capacity to occur in virtually every industry that goes through over-capacity and hostile times. Capacity will not go away until it cannot produce cash for any owner. The recent closing of the San Francisco Bay Area Nummi plant, once co-owned by GM and Toyota, is a clear indication that the plant can no longer produce cash as an automobile plant. It may finally stop producing automobiles forever. It is worth noting, however, that this was a GM automobile plant before it became Nummi. It had already been recycled once in the mid-1980s.

Yep, Those Germans are the Problem

There has been much press over the last few weeks about the problems in the Euro Zone. Most particularly, we have learned more than we may want to know about the problems of deficit spending in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. Just recently, though, we may have learned that the problem is not the deficit spending in those recessionary countries. No, the problem seems to be the Germans.

Over the last ten years those nasty Germans have kept the lid on labor cost growth and have jacked up their rates of productivity. (See the Symptom & Implication, “Some competitors automate to become the lowest cost players” on StrategyStreet.com.) These simple actions have enabled Germany to compete on price despite high labor rates and competition from countries in the Euro Zone with nominal lower labor costs. Oh, those countries include Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. Those inconsiderate Germans have produced a Euro 136 billion trade surplus in 2009. Spain, Greece and Portugal ran significant deficits. The Finance Minister of France has suggested that Germany’s export dependent growth model may be causing a lot of the problem in the Euro Zone. Her answer to this problem is for Germany to begin spurring domestic demand. So we see that the problem in the Euro Zone is people who do not deficit spend and who take advantage of all their poorer neighbors who do deficit spend.

This is causing turmoil in the Euro Zone that, in the long run, is almost certainly bad for the Euro. Some countries might have to exit the Euro Zone. Greece has threatened to use IMF resources to continue its deficit spending. The economic disunity in the Euro Zone is creating political disunity as well. There is a question whether the Euro Zone can continue in its present form.

We have similar situations among the states in the United States. The differences are that the states can not threaten to withdraw from the Dollar Zone, nor are they eligible for IMF financing. Our deficit financing states tend to be those with the highest labor costs. As a result, the unemployment rate in these states is higher, often much higher, than that in the country as a whole. In January of 2010, the United States national unemployment rate, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed an average of 10% unemployment in the country. The highest unemployment occurred in Michigan, with a 14.3% rate. Other high unemployment states included Rhode Island, California, Illinois and Ohio. In many of these states, labor costs are not only high, but they are inflexible. Companies can not change work rules, nor adjust rates of labor, to match the current economy. That’s part of the reason that jobs flee these states.

In the Euro Zone, German workers have wages and benefits among the highest in Europe. They average Euro 34 an hour, roughly $48 an hour. Recently, the German Metal Workers Union accepted a new contract with very low wage growth in order to protect their jobs in Germany.

Here is a contrast for you. In 2008, the average worker for the “Big Three” automakers earned $73 an hour in total compensation. Workers at Toyota, and other foreign makers, earned an average of $48 in their U.S. operations. These companies have located their U.S. plants in areas where labor is more flexible. The average U.S. manufacturing worker earned something less than $32 an hour in 2008. These labor cost disparities help us understand how Detroit is losing population. Nearly a quarter of its manufacturing jobs have left. The city suffers from a 50% unemployment rate. Detroit’s woes certainly have contributed to Michigan’s nation-leading 14.3% unemployment rate. But isn’t some of this woe self-inflicted? Why can’t domestic automakers make cars in the U.S. for $48 an hour?

The German unions have learned that they can sustain their high rates of pay only so long as they help their companies become more productive with every hour of labor. The workforce shares a large portion of the improvement in productivity. (See “Audio Tip #187: The Components of Productivity” on StrategyStreet.com.) Apparently, at least one of our leading labor unions does not share that calculus.

Pricing Myths

There is a price war going on in the retail liquor department. This is good news for those of us who enjoy a drink but bad news for the liquor companies.

It seems that consumers have been switching their purchases to less expensive brands of liquor during the recession. They are not drinking less, though. (See the Symptom & Implication, “Low end products are gaining share of the market” on StrategyStreet.com.) The volume of spirits sold in 2009 was up by 1.4%, but the revenue remained flat due to price discounting and consumers shifting to cheaper brands.

Diageo, the world’s largest liquor producer, is part of the industry’s problem. This company has been aggressive in reducing its prices with the two-fold purpose of holding on to their current customers and gaining share against other liquor producers. The falling prices are most obvious with vodka, tequila and gin. Some competitors of Diageo are refusing to go along with the price discount. For example, Patron, the maker of Patron tequila, has resisted the price cutting. (See the Symptom & Implication, “Some competitors seek price increases more aggressively than others” on StrategyStreet.com.) The CEO of Diageo believes that his discounting has helped the company gain market share and retain consumers. Still, his revenues are off compared to the previous year.

The equity analysts believe that price discounting will hurt Diageo’s brand equity. I disagree.

The history of many markets is replete with examples of branded goods who have had to discount during difficult times. Remember Marlboro Tuesday? How about the price wars in the 80s and 90s in beer, disposable diapers, fast food, tires, farm machinery, construction equipment, appliances and personal computers, to name just a few? Companies must respond to shifting consumer preferences and most price discounting.

An industry in overcapacity is certain to experience price discounting. It is true that this causes customers to become more price-sensitive, but that price sensitivity lasts only as long as industry competitors will discount against one another. (See “Video #11: What Ends Hostility” on StrategyStreet.com.) Once the period of discounting has passed, companies regain pricing power and branded equity is as strong as it ever was. For proof, consider the brand leaders in the industries cited in the previous paragraph.

Part of a company’s brand equity with consumers is the fact that the company is viewed as pricing “reasonably” with competitors. If a company will not price with rough equivalence to its competition, it also destroys its brand equity. Consider General Motors in the 80s, IBM in the personal computer market and Xerox in copiers. You don’t want a reputation as someone who prices high just because you believe that your brand is better than everyone else’s. That way leads to big troubles.

Fewer Customers? Cut Capacity

For a year now the economy has weighed down passenger airline traffic. The industry expects a 4% reduction in passenger volume for 2009’s Thanksgiving season compared to the previous year. And, as demand has fallen, so have prices. Ticket prices this year are down 13% compared to 2008, so the industry is getting hit twice: by a fall-off in passenger seat miles flown, and by falling prices per seat mile. (See the Symptom & Implication “Demand in the industry is falling” on StrategyStreet.com.)

The airline industry thought it had an answer to this developing problem: cutting capacity. The industry has reduced capacity by 6.9% this year in the expectation that the industry could improve its efficiency and raise prices. (See “Audio Tip #116: The Withdrawal of Capacity to Raise Prices” on StrategyStreet.com.)

So, why haven’t prices risen? There are two possible answers. The first is that the industry has panicked and is offering lower prices to keep demand from falling any further than it already has. This answer is certainly in keeping with the industry’s previous practices. But there is a more subtle and more problematic answer as well, and that is that the smaller industry carriers are adding capacity faster than the industry leaders are reducing it.

Over the years we have witnessed many cases where industry leaders would reduce their capacity in order to constrain supply and force industry prices to rise. Time and again industry followers have stymied these initiatives. These followers insist on adding capacity, even as the industry leaders withdraw it. The result is the same, or more capacity, and continued low or falling prices.

To some extent, this addition of capacity by follower competitors is predictable (see “Audio Tip #106: How do we Predict Competitor Responses to our Price Moves?” on StrategyStreet.com). These smaller competitors already added capacity in the face of low industry pricing. They have even more incentive to add capacity as industry prices rise.

Industry Contraction Exposes Potential Low Price Points

The legal industry is suffering just like the rest of us in this economy. Interestingly, not all legal firms are suffering. The firms that are suffering the most are the large firms, who have done well for many years. These firms typically bill their large clients between $700 and $800 an hour for legal work. They have more than 200 lawyers in the firm. The next tier down sees law firms with 200 or fewer lawyers. These firms typically bill clients between $200 and $500 an hour for work done by their senior partners. Overall, the smaller firms seem to be about 25% cheaper than their larger cousins. These smaller firms are actually growing in this economy. While their larger brethren are laying off lawyers, the small to medium sized firms are hiring today. (See Video #6: Competition and Low-Cost Expansion on StrategyStreet.com.)

These firms are hiring because many of the large clients for corporate legal work are shifting some of the work that they used to give to the larger, more expensive law firms, to these smaller firms. These clients have discovered that they have more than one type of legal need. And, at least in some cases, the legal need is for less skill and cost than the capabilities offered by the largest law firms.

Clearly, the larger law firms are having trouble adjusting their pricing to meet these cheaper legal competitors. It appears they could do so, at least in part, by acknowledging that there is more than one price point for legal work. (See Video #21: Definition of Price Leaders on StrategyStreet.com.) These larger firms might offer less senior staff at lower costs for projects that would be satisfactorily serviced with less experienced employees. They could create a lower price point that would enable the larger law firms to reduce the loss of business to the smaller firms.

The large clients for the larger firms will always need the larger firms for the most sophisticated transactions. But, in these straitened times, these clients have to reduce their spending. If the large law firms allow them to reduce this spending by shifting work to smaller firms, they are losing an opportunity to preserve their revenues. These revenues can go a long way toward covering the cash fixed costs that all law firms face. (See Video #56: Design to Value as an Approach to Cost Management on StrategyStreet.com.)

High Growth and Falling Profits

Recently, Europe passed legislation aimed at breaking long standing monopolies in Europe’s equity trading systems. As a result, a number of alternative trading systems poured into Europe’s equity markets.

The new market entrants are offering new technology and lower prices. They have succeeded in shifting significant market share away from the former industry leaders. In fact, four of the new entrants now control 16% of the trading in Europe’s equity markets. (See the Symptom and Implication, “Most share shifting in the industry seems to be coming from volume gained within existing customer relationships rather than from new customers” on StrategyStreet.com.) There is one problem, however, the margins are razor thin.

The problem is pricing. While all these new entrants poured into the market, the prices fell as they jousted with one another to gain their market shares. One of the companies has reduced its prices three times within the last four months. Industry prices are now down about 20%.

What are these new firms going to do about their poor profits? What any self-respecting low-end competitor would do if it has the opportunity. They are going to expand into other more complex markets and other asset classes that carry higher margins. This expansion will add relatively little cost because most of their trading systems costs are fixed. (See Video #6: Competition and Low-Cost Expansion on StrategyStreet.com.) In addition to improving margins, at least temporarily, this move into new asset classes and customer markets may help them in another way. These new trading systems will become more attractive because they become more of a one-stop shop for customers in the industry. The ability to offer one-stop shopping is usually a benefit offered by the industry’s leaders, whom we call Standard Leaders. This is one important reason that Standard Leaders dominate an industry.

"Illogical" Pricing

How can pricing hit zero? This has just happened with container freight rates or shipments from South Asia to Europe. Other rates are not much better. Container shipment fees from North Asia to Europe have fallen to $200, taking them below the shippers’ operating costs. $200 per container is bad, but how to you get to zero?

Our previous blog (“Why Overcapacity Often Gets Worse” below) discusses pricing in overcapacity. The price in a commodity industry is equivalent to the cash cost of the next person to enter the industry or the last person to exit. So, what do these prices tell us about costs? Are they “illogical”?

First of all, the prices are not what they seem. In addition to the “price” there are other charges for fuel, called bunker costs, and other fees. So, even at a zero price for the container shipment, the shipping company still makes some cash contribution. Second, the cash costs of operating ships are largely fixed. One observer noted that idle ships are now stretched in rows outside Singapore’s harbor. These are ships whose cash cost of operation are higher than those ships that are now sailing, even though shipping rates are “zero”.

Third, the industry is in severe overcapacity. This overcapacity is the result of a significant fall-off in export demand. Exported container movements have fallen between 25 and 40% in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Even China is now seeing a contraction in shipments. Activity in the U.S. ports is also falling. Shipments from Long Beach and Los Angeles, which are America’s two top ports, have fallen nearly 20% from a year ago.

Container fees from North Asia, at $200, represent a demand level relative to capacity somewhat better than that from South Asia. Still, few, if any, shipping companies are making an operating profit at $200 a container.

This situation is likely to continue until demand begins to grow again. (See the Symptom and Implication, “Prices are rising as the industry runs out of capacity” on StrategyStreet.com.) Overcapacity ends in one of two situations. In the first situation, price competition stops despite there being more capacity than the industry needs. This occurs when a maximum of four competitors gain control of 85% or more of industry capacity. Furthermore, these four competitors must refuse to discount against one another in search of additional sales volume. In the second situation, industry demand grows by enough to sop up excess capacity and prices begin to rise in order to attract new capacity into the market. By far, the most common way that industries exit overcapacity is through demand growth. (See the Perspective, “What Ends Hostility” on StrategyStreet.com.)

Why Overcapacity Often Gets Worse

The global semiconductor industry is in severe overcapacity today. There are two causes for this current overcapacity: competitor expansion and a fall-off in demand. Competitors expanded rapidly over the last few years when demand was relatively high. New semiconductor capacity comes on stream in big chunks, produced in factories costing more than a billion dollars. Now, many of those factories are running at half their rated capacity as demand has fallen off in the last year. The situation is bad enough that, today, no company can make a profit on standard semiconductor memory chips.

So, why don’t semiconductor manufacturers reduce industry overcapacity by closing plants? The answer lies in the cost structure of these factories. Seventy percent of these factory costs are fixed. They neither rise nor fall with short term changes in demand. As a result, these factories continue operating as long as their operators can make a cash contribution to fixed costs.

These high fixed costs explain why semiconductor prices fall so low in overcapacity. Prices have to fall low enough to discourage someone from producing. That discouragement has to include pricing through the level of any fixed cost. In a commodity-like market, such as semiconductor memory chips, the industry price is equivalent to the cash costs of the next person into the market. As a market expands, the cash cost of the next addition to capacity sets the price. In a market that is shrinking, the cash cost of the last person to leave the market is a pretty good estimate for industry prices. The last person to leave the market is usually the high cost producer. So, a declining demand industry sees industry prices fall below the cash costs of the high cost producer until enough high cost production is taken off-line to balance demand.

Even once a plant reaches the stage where it can not make a cash contribution on sales in its present structure, there are still instances where that capacity does not close permanently. Instead, the capacity recycles in the industry as another competitor, often with a lower cost structure, acquires the productive facility and keeps it operating at a lower cash cost. (See the Symptom and Implication, “Industry profits are low but downsized capacity remains” on StrategyStreet.com.)

Once productive capacity exists, it goes away with difficulty, even in an industry downturn. High cost capacity may not go away permanently until it is unable to compete with the cost structure of newer, more technologically advanced plants, even in a rising price environment. (See the Symptom and Implication, “The industry is adding new more efficient capacity in the effort to reduce cost” on StrategyStreet.com.)

The Causes and Symptoms of Overcapacity

Overcapacity, where an industry can produce more than customers currently demand, is the result either of a fall-off in demand or the expansion of competition. During the 80s and 90s, three quarters of the industries that went into overcapacity did so as a result of expansion of competition. Industries such as semiconductors, airlines, mini-computers and even orange juice went into hostility as competitors expanded faster than demand grew.

More recently, though, most of the industries going into overcapacity have suffered from a major fall-off in demand as the world-wide economy slips into recession. Any industry associated with residential building is now in overcapacity, as new housing starts to plummet. Mall owners are suffering as retailers go out of business.

Even very low cost competitors in an industry suffer when the industry goes into overcapacity due to a fall-off in demand. During the 80s, much of the U.S. domestic textile industry shifted off shore to low-cost producers such as India. But in this latest economic crisis, even the Indian textile industry is suffering from overcapacity. Textile employees in India in the least-skilled jobs may earn only $2.00 a day. But many of them are losing their jobs as European and American clothing retailers slash orders.

No matter how an industry enters overcapacity, it will follow a common evolutionary pattern. (See the Perspective, “Success Under Fire: Policies to Prosper in Hostile Times” on StrategyStreet.com.) There are six phases to this evolution:

Phase 1: Margin pressure. Competitors begin discounting to maintain their utilization rates. As a result, prices and margins fall throughout the industry.

Phase 2: Share shifts. Some competitors, often the leaders in the industry, refuse to go along with the price declines spreading throughout the industry. We call this phenomenon the Leader’s Trap. (See the Perspective, “The Leader’s Trap” on StrategyStreet.com.) This occurs early in overcapacity and causes significant early share shifts from high-priced to low-priced competitors. Following this early shift in shares, the industry will see additional shifts in shares due to the flight quality from less reliable to more reliable competitors and due to acquisitions.

Phase 3: Product proliferation. The industry floods the market with new products in order to reignite customer demand. These new products include bundling of benefits in an attempt to upgrade the product by adding additional features or functions, and product unbundling, where the innovator seeks to remove product features to reach a new, lower price point.

Phase 4: Self-defeating cost reduction. Inevitably, companies face the need to reduce their costs. The less successful companies reduce costs at the customer’s expense. They do so by conscious decisions leading to feature failure, where the company delays matching popular new product features, quality slippage, where the company does not keep pace with the industry’s quality and delivery standards and distribution conflicts, where manufacturers seek to shift their margin pressure away from themselves on to their channels of distribution.

Phase 5: Consolidation and shake-out. Over time, the industry goes through several waves of consolidation and shake-out where new, stronger companies emerge and weaker firms are absorbed.

Phase 6: Rescue. Once an industry enters overcapacity, it can stay hostile for a number of years. The American automobile industry and the airline industries have been hostile for well over twenty years. An industry is rescued from hostile conditions by demand growth in most cases. The industry demand gradually catches up to industry capacity and prices rise to encourage new investment once again. A few industries see a rescue from the consolidation and rationalizations in the industry that reduce industry competition to three or four players who control more than 80% of the total market. Often, these industries will develop “gentlemanly” competition where true price competition is rare. Industry prices then rise to attractive levels. The industry is no longer in overcapacity because competitors will not discount against one another to use marginal capacity.

Industry Capacity Expansion Despite Overcapacity

The global automobile industry is in world-wide overcapacity. In 2006, the industry had the capacity to build 80 million vehicles. It produced just under 65 million vehicles that year. The industry breaks even on factory output at about an 80% utilization rate, roughly where the industry was in 2006. And with demand falling globally by 3% or so in 2008, you would think that the industry would not be adding capacity, but it is. Capacity is increasing rapidly. By 2011, the global auto industry is likely to be able to produce 100 million vehicles in a year.

Why would this be happening? There are three reasons that capacity might expand in an industry despite overcapacity. The first reason is that some geographic segments are growing faster than average. India and China, in particular, are growing faster than the average world-wide demand and will add capacity to meet local needs. (See the Symptom & Implication, “Both new entrants as well as existing competitors have added capacity” on StrategyStreet.com.) Second, some industry competitors can afford to add capacity under the pricing umbrella of other competitors. This is going on today in North America. Honda is just opening a new assembly plant in Indiana. Honda is operating under the pricing umbrella set by the UAW and its big three auto plants. Third, virtually all industries see capacity expansion through what we call the “learning curve” effect. A plant in operation can become more productive each year simply by learning to do things more efficiently. This increase in productivity causes the plant capacity and, therefore, the industry capacity to increase.

We have studied over fifty industries in overcapacity. In each of those industries where we had the opportunity to measure plant productivity, capacity increased every year due to the “learning curve” effect. This effect works even in slow-growing industries, such as newsprint. Its effect on capacity grows as the rate of growth in the industry increases. A high tech plant would have a greater growth in productivity and capacity from the “learning curve” effect than would a newsprint facility.

Industries that appear to be in severe overcapacity may still be adding capacity. This growth in capacity adds to the pressure on industry prices and margins. It prolongs the industry’s pain from overcapacity. (See the Symptom & Implication, “The company believes the industry will be more diplomatic about adding capacity” on StrategyStreet.com.)

Commodity Pricing

In 2002, the average price for nickel was around $3 a pound. Shortly thereafter, the market took off. The price for nickel reached a peak of over $23 a pound in 2007, and has since fallen off. Today, its price is something short of $10 a pound. Still, the $10 a pound today is far above the $3 a pound of six years ago.

Despite prices that look very high in the light of history, nickel production facilities are closing in several parts of the world. What explains a market that could sustain a production facility at $3 a pound but cannot sustain that same facility at $10 a pound?

The answer lies in the way prices work. The price of any product is the cash cost of the next unit of production. This is true in any market but is most easy to observe in a commodity market. In a falling price environment, the cash cost of the next unit of production is approximated by the cash cost of the last production that closed. In a rising price market, the commodity price is the cash cost of the next unit brought into production. Now let’s see how this rule works.

After 2002, as demand for and the price of nickel began to accelerate, new production came on line. Some of these new mines can produce cash at prices as low as $5 in today’s market. The high prices discouraged some demand. Customers, where possible, turned to substitute products, which dampened the growth in demand somewhat. The result is that there may be as much as 90,000 metric tons of excess capacity in the marketplace, about 5% of current demand. Hence, the drastic fall of prices since 2007.

But, even at today’s $10 a pound, nickel operations are closing, which tells us that the cash costs of those operations must be above $10. How could that be when they could produce cash in 2002 with a $3 price?

The culprit here is costs. The mining industry is energy-intensive in a market where energy prices have soared dramatically. The industry uses a great deal of steel and sulfur in its production. The rising costs of these commodities have increased the cash costs of nickel production. Very few operations could continue operating at 2002’s price of $3. Most throw off cash at a price of $10 or more per pound. If the commodity costs of sulfur, steel and energy decline, so too will the price of nickel.

In summary, over the last six years, demand increased and prices rose to meet that demand. This caused customers to reduce their demands somewhat and competitors to bring on new capacity, some with relatively low cash operating costs compared to older operations. At the same time, the cash costs of operating a production facility increased dramatically because of the rising costs of other commodities used in the production of nickel. (See the Perspectives, “Must the Cycle Start Again?” and “Who Has Pricing Power?” on StrategyStreet.com.) The net result is a 2008 nickel industry that is more efficient than that of 2002 but with higher costs of the commodities required for production. So 2002’s $3 per pound price has risen to $10 per pound. However, if the prices of the commodities the industry uses were to fall to 2002’s levels, the price of nickel would likely fall below $3 per pound.

Capacity Reduction to Raise Prices

Some analysts have estimated that the domestic airline industry needs to reduce its capacity by 20% in order to become profitable. This estimate sounds very high to me, as I’m sure it would to most of the flying public. If you miss a flight today, or if one should happen to be canceled on you, you are not necessarily going to get to your destination today. Airlines are flying with a high percentage of their seats filled.

But the airline industry seems to be taking this advice to heart. All of the legacy airlines have announced substantial capacity reductions to their current fleets. In addition, the legacy airlines have been shifting domestic capacity to their international routes, thereby reducing domestic capacity, over the last few years.

There is a broad belief that this reduction in capacity will enable the industry to raise prices. This is unlikely to be the case in this industry, as it has not been the case in other industries.

Over the last twenty years, we have analyzed many industries in overcapacity, like the current domestic airline industry. (See “The Real Reason Market Share Matters” in StrategyStreet.com/Tools/Perspectives) In several of those industries, the industry leaders reduced their capacity in order to support prices or get them to rise to more acceptable levels. In each case, this initiative failed.

Capacity reduction usually fails because lower cost competitors in the industry simply add capacity as the higher cost capacity withdraws. The industry leaders end up with lower market shares and the expanding followers end up with both higher market shares and better cost structures. These low-cost competitors become even more formidable opponents.

The same thing seems to be happening in the airline industry today. As the legacy carriers have reduced their domestic capacity over the last few years, the low-cost airlines have expanded to take their places. Already, Southwest Airlines has announced plans to continue growing its domestic route structure through 2009. Virgin America, a discount airline, also plans to take delivery of new aircraft over the next year. Sounds like the same old story playing out again.