NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. corporate spending on capital projects could fall this year to the lowest level since 2011, with steep reductions by the energy industry and companies in other sectors cutting spending amid broad concerns about global growth.
Among the S&P sectors, only the materials and financials sectors expect to spend more in 2015 than they did last year, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis of spending outlooks from the 255 S&P 500 companies that have offered guidance on their capex for the year.Analyst projections for all S&P 500 companies point in the same direction: a grim year for capital expenditures.The numbers suggest that corporate bosses across many sectors are less confident in the economy than they had been in recent years."They're not spending at a pace that would suggest a global recovery," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.That could translate to lower job growth and weakness in the technology and industrial companies that typically benefit from capital spending."The new worry cropping up in the first-quarter earnings season is the concern of a more pervasive slowdown across industrial markets," RBC Capital Markets analysts wrote in a recent note.Analyst estimates show total S&P 500 capex spending could dip 11 percent to $641.6 billion in 2015 from actual 2014 spending of $718.1 billion, marking the lowest level since 2011's $591.5 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.That would break the recent trend of increasing S&P 500 capital spending every year since at least 2009, the data shows.Companies themselves are projecting a similar decline from 2014 levels, with total spending from 255 S&P 500 companies projected at $410.2 billion this year, down from actual spending by those same firms of $459.2 billion last year.As expected, S&P 500 energy companies account for the biggest fall in projected spending levels. As a group, their capex plans are down by $21.4 billion, or 14.1 percent from a year ago, according to the Thomson Reuters analysis. U.S. oil prices are down more than 43 percent from mid-June of last year. There are a few bright spots, including International Paper