Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
Summary
Overall, automation suppliers saw continued robust growth during the fourth quarter of 2017, increasing by nearly 5 percent compared to the same quarter the previous year. Discrete-centric suppliers continued to see the strongest gains in both revenues and new orders. This reflects the growth in the automotive and electronics sectors in several world regions. Investment activity is recovering slowly in the process sectors. Acquisition activity has had a significant influence on revenues during 2017, and although we expect this trend to continue, the fundamentals of the market appear to have strengthened, as demonstrated by very strong or-der taking reported by almost all suppliers.
Strong Growth Across All Sectors for Automation Suppliers
Compared to the fourth quarter of 2016, the total combined revenues of automation suppliers to both the process and discrete manufacturing industries grew by 4.9 percent (see Figure 2). Process industry 
suppliers saw their combined revenues grow by 8.8 percentage points; while suppliers to the discrete industries saw a 17.3 percent increase in combined revenues. While recent acquisitions and divestitures (Parker, Emerson, Thermo Fisher) had an effect, many suppliers reported strong double-digit organic growth. GE’s difficulties continue to impact our analysis. If we factored out the fourth quarter revenue performance of the recently reorganized GE Power group, the overall market would have grown by over 12 percent year over year.
Among suppliers that report order intake, many saw large increases in activity during the quarter. On average, however, orders fell by 6 percent during the quarter. As with revenues, without the large decrease in orders experienced by GE Power, the combined order activity of all other suppliers would have risen by nearly 17 percent.
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Keywords: Automation Suppliers, Quarterly Results, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Latin America, North America, ARC Advisory Group.