Friday, February 18, 2005
Falling to its lowest level in over a year, North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.80 in January, down from 0.94 in December, according to the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) trade group on Thursday (Feb. 17).
A book-to-bill of 0.80 means that $80 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month. The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers.
The three-month average of worldwide bookings in January 2005 was $1.01 billion. The bookings figure is 18 percent below the revised December 2004 level of $1.24 billion and 18 percent below the $1.23 billion in orders posted in January 2004, according to SEMI.
The three-month average of worldwide billings in January 2005 was $1.27 billion. The billings figure is 4 percent below the revised December 2004 level of $1.32 billion and 23 percent above the January 2004 billings level of $1.03 billion.
"The three-month average bookings figure for new semiconductor equipment is now at the lowest level since November 2003," said Stanley T. Myers, president and CEO of SEMI, in a statement. "Total bookings declined sharply in January and are now about 37 percent below the cyclic peak observed in June 2004."
January saw no pick-up in activity in the chip-equipment business, as the worldwide book-to-bill ratio hit 0.88 for the month, up from 0.84 in December, according to VLSI Research Inc.
By: DocMemory
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