Short Sight 4 is Small, Without Price Increases

Talk ahead of this week’s Sight that the DTC will increase prices was found to be unfounded. Sightholders received the goods according to their ITOs at unchanged prices and steady mixes. This is not preventing renewed speculation, however, that prices will rise at the next Sight in June.

Estimated at about $500 million, the sight was also a short one, starting on Tuesday due to a Bank holiday in London, and a crowded one with Sightholders from Antwerp getting their goods ahead of two public holidays on Thursday and Friday.

Premiums on DTC boxes are high again, averaging 10 – 11 percent across the board as traders are reporting a shortage of goods and rough prices are spiraling upwards again.

The ITO request form was posted to the Sightholders extranet two weeks late and they have only until the 23rd of this month to fill out their requests for rough supplies in the second half of the year.

This ITO will be handed to those who will be on the new Sightholders list so the DTC is not expected to make any final decisions regarding the ITO until it decides who is on the highly coveted list.

Speaking of the new Sightholders list, it is now clear that it will not be published before the JCK Las Vegas show. Since the week after the show is a Sight week, conventional wisdom holds that it will be published in mid-June.

Some Sightholders are voicing an interest in ‘going south’, receiving a second Sight in South Africa. The idea is that they will receive a Sight based on their profile, up to a cap of $2 million if they are not South African Sightholders.

They are required to have local manufacturing capabilities and it is understood that some Sightholders are looking into partnering with local manufacturers, some former Sightholders themselves.