US wholesale inventories shrank for the ninth month in a row in May to $402.24 billion, their lowest level since August 2007, government data showed this afternoon.
The 0.8 per cent drop was smaller than the 1 per cent decline analysts polled by Reuters had expected. The Commerce Department also revised April's fall to 1.3 per cent from the 1.4 per cent reported last month.
Sales at merchant wholesalers rose 0.2 per cent, beating analysts' expectations that they would be unchanged and pushing the inventory-to-sales ratio, a measure of how long it would take to deplete current stocks, down to 1.29 months' worth from April's 1.31 months.
That was the lowest since a matching ratio in November.
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Reuters