SAN JOSE — The 90-day moving average orders at North American semiconductor equipment manufacturers was $1.48 billion in March, up 10.7% from the revised February numbers.
The three-month average of worldwide bookings was down 6.4% from March 2011.
Billings, meanwhile, fell 0.9% from February to $1.31 billion. Billings were down 20.9% from March 2011, but reached their highest level since July 2011.
The book-to-bill ratio rose 12 basis point sequentially to 1.13, SEMI said. A book-to-bill of 1.13 means that $113 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month. It was the sixth straight month of growth and the highest mark since August 2010.
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. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars. Semiconductor equipment sales are considered a leading indicator of future IC and printed circuit board sales.
|
Billings |
Bookings |
Book-to-Bill |
Oct 2011 |
1,258.3 |
926.8 |
0.74 |
Nov 2011 |
1,176.7 |
977.2 |
0.83 |
Dec 2011 |
1,300.0 |
1,102.9 |
0.85 |
Jan 2012 |
1,239.9 |
1,187.5 |
0.96 |
Feb 2012 (final) |
1,322.8 |
1,336.9 |
1.01 |
March 2012 (prelim) |
1,310.9 |
1,479.3 |
1.13 |
Source: SEMI April 2012