Looking at February's Swiss CPI inflation release on a more granular basis, MNI's calculations show that the closely-watched housing and energy category, within which the SNB projected inflation ticking up in Q1 2024, slowed but remained elevated on a sequential seasonally-adjusted basis.

• Specifically, MNI sees headline inflation at +0.22% M/M SA (vs +0.13% prior), core inflation at +0.13% M/M SA (vs +0.07% prior) and inflation in the housing and energy category at +0.58% M/M SA, clearly lower than January's +0.91% but still higher than the +0.25% average of the last 12 months.
• This comes alongside rental price inflation increasing on a yearly basis in February, to +2.7% Y/Y (vs +2.2% Y/Y prior) materializing the SNB's predictions from its December meeting at least partly, so the downtick in monthly seasonally adjusted inflation in the housing and energy category was driven by electricity prices, which inflated in January on a monthly comparison but stayed flat in February as electricity rates only change at the beginning of each year in Switzerland.
• Looking at other drivers of the headline figure, air transport contributed the strongest on a monthly basis (+0.13pp), but that uptick seems seasonally-driven as the category saw deflation on a yearly comparison in February (-3.2% Y/Y Feb vs +5.9% Jan).
• A selection of food items were the strongest negative monthly contributors in February (-0.02pp contr. of berries, -0.01pp of beef).

MNI, CH FSO