| Consensus | Consensus Range | Actual | Previous | Revised | |
| Month over Month | -0.2% | -0.3% to 0.5% | -0.7% | 0.7% | 0.8% |
| Year over Year | -2.5% | -3.2% to -1.9% | -3.0% | -2.1% | -2.0% |
Highlights
The February 2026 producer price data reveals a disinflation story driven almost entirely by energy, masking underlying price persistence elsewhere. On a monthly basis, the sharp fall in energy prices (minus 2.4 percent) is the dominant force, pulling down headline industrial inflation. However, excluding energy, prices still edged up (0.1 percent), signalling ongoing cost pressures within the production system. Increases in intermediate and capital goods (0.3 percent) point to sticky input and investment-related costs, suggesting that firms are still facing upstream pricing constraints.
The annual picture reinforces this divergence. While energy prices are down significantly (minus 11.7 percent), all other categories show positive inflationparticularly durable consumer goods (2.5 percent) and capital goods (1.6 percent). This indicates that core industrial inflation remains intact, even as headline figures appear subdued.
The implication of this latest report is that headline disinflation is driven by volatile energy markets, and underlying price rigidity in manufacturing and investment goods. This creates a policy challengeheadline inflation may fall, but cost pressures within the real economy persist, limiting the speed of pass-through relief to consumers.
Overall, the data suggests disinflation without true cost normalisation, leaving firms and policymakers navigating an incomplete easing cycle. These latest updates take the RPI to minus 43 and the RPI-P to minus 30, meaning that economic activities continue to fall behind market expectations in the euro area.
Market Consensus Before Announcement
Wholesale prices under deflationary pressure with the consensus looking for declines of 0.2 percent on month and 2.5 percent on year for February.
Definition
The Producer Prices Index (PPI) measures the gross trading price of industrial goods sold into the domestic market. Changes in the index provide a guide to inflation from the point of view of the product's producer/manufacturer and, in contrast to the consumer price index (CPI), excludes VAT and other deductible taxed associated with turnover. The PPI covers manufacturing, mining and quarrying and utilities but excludes construction. The headline index can be very volatile so financial markets look at a core index to better understand underlying trends. This excludes the often highly erratic energy subsector.
Description
The PPI measures prices at the producer level before they are passed along to consumers. Since the producer price index measures prices of consumer goods and capital equipment, a portion of the inflation at the producer level gets passed through to the HICP. By tracking price pressures in the pipeline, investors can anticipate inflationary consequences in coming months.
Like the HICP, Eurostat's producer price index is also harmonized across the EMU and the larger EU membership. Producer price indexes provide another layer of information on inflation and can be an early warning of inflationary pressures building in the economy. They also record the evolution of prices over longer periods of time. The PPI reports on input prices or commodity prices and can tell whether producers are able to pass through increases in costs to their customers.
The PPI is considered a precursor of both consumer price inflation and profits. If the prices paid to manufacturers increase, businesses are faced with either charging higher prices or taking a cut in profits. The ability to pass along price increases depends on the strength and competitiveness of the marketplace.
Producer prices are more volatile than consumer prices. The CPI includes services components which are more stable than goods, while the PPI does not. Commodity prices react more quickly to supply and demand. Volatility is higher earlier in the production chain. Partly because of this, financial markets will look to the core (ex-energy) index to provide a better guide to underlying trends.