The ongoing coronavirus has been hitting hard on multinational U.S. companies that both manufacture their products and sell their goods in China, where mass quarantines have stalled one of the world's largest markets.
For many U.S. companies, the coronavirus has exacerbated troubles they were already having manufacturing in China, after the Trump administration last year levied large import tariffs on Chinese-made goods.
Fast-food chains and other retailers, including Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), Domino's Pizza (NYSE: DPZ) and Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU), have closed stores in China or postponed new-store openings. American Axle & Manufacturing (NYSE: AXL), an auto parts maker based in Detroit, said it expects about $25 million in lost sales during February and early March as car manufacturing slumps in China.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which recently opened a Shanghai factory to build its Model 3 for Chinese customers, announced in January that it expected the virus to "slightly impact" profitability.
In fact nearly half of U.S. companies in China expect revenue from the country to fall this year if businesses can't return to normal before the end of April, according to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China conducted in February. And about a fifth of U.S. companies said 2020 revenue from China will plummet by more than 50% if the epidemic extends through the end of August.
On the other hand, Chinese State Owned Enterprises have chosen to resume regular work hours. The 48,000 subsidiaries under the 96 central government-owned firms supervised by the oversight agency have reported a 91.7 per cent work resumption rate.
Official figures for major companies and essential industries such as food processing also indicated a high level of return to work.
Economic production has been sharply curtailed since late January, when Beijing extended the Lunar New Year holiday for a week, with several provinces announcing further extensions until mid-February, prompted by the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, which had caused more than 80,000 infections and over 2,900 deaths in mainland China.