The analysis of an industry’s life cycle is useful for making projections about profit margins, earnings growth, trends in sales and profitability. To simplify things it is quite common to reduce the entire life cycle of an industry to 5 stages Such a 5-stage model is described by Reilly and Brown (2003). Abrief description of the different stages will follow next.

Pioneering development: A modest sales growth is accompanied by small or negative profit margins and profits. The firms face high R&D costs. Most recent examples are high-tech companies or internet-based companies with unproven business models. Most of the financing is obtained through venture capital or private equity.

Rapid accelerating growth: Demand for products and services grows and due to only few competitors, profit margins are high. Firms experience substantial backlogs and production capacity is being built up. At this stage successful companies will be able to access the capital markets for further financing.

Mature growth: An increasing number of competitors enter the market. The demand for the industry’s goods and services is satisfied, prices decline and profit margins begin to decline. At this stage financial discipline is important because future earnings might be lower due to competition. Companies with sustainable debt levels will benefit in the long run.

Stabilization and market maturity: The growth rate of the industry declines to the growth rate of the aggregate economy and profit growth will vary by industry due to different competitive structures. Competition will result in lower profit margins. In this stage industry trends will contribute to the development of aggregate credit quality.

Deceleration of growth and decline: Sales growth declines because of changes in demand and new substitutes. An increasing number of companies start to generate losses. The industry experiences a negative credit trend.

The sector selection is one of the most important performance drivers in a corporate bond portfolio. The overweighting and underweighting of different industries is a key element in a corporate bond strategy. The weighting of sectors in a corporate bond portfolio is the result of controlled deviations from the benchmark. They are based on the analysis of the operating environment of specific sectors, a bottom-up analysis of the respective companies and the risk-return profiles of bonds from a specific sector. It is advantageous to set up a corporate bond team by sectors because this structure allows an in-depth coverage of all sectors and the understanding of the competitive environment as well as the market positions and management strategies of single companies out of each sector. An industry consists of a group of firms which offer products that are close substitutes for each other.

The breakdown of real GDP in its components highlights the importance of private consumption and investment for the state of the economy. In Q4 2003, personal consumption and investment accounted for 87 percent of US real GDP, that is, these components are major drivers of the economic cycle. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that is responsible for dating recessions employs a variety of indicators to determine the peak and trough of an economic cycle, recessions are usually characterized by declining private demand. Tthis was not true for the 2001 recession. The consumer held up very well, taking on even more debt and thus stretching his balance sheet to the limit.

Tax rebates and incentives like the zero percent financing in the automotive sector supported the high level of consumption additionally, so that the indebtedness of private households reached record highs while the savings rate plunged to extremely low levels by historical standards. This combination explains not only the limited downturn of retail sales during the 2001 recession, but also the sluggish recovery compared to former recessions.