SEMI reports growth in bookings as book-to-bill ratio improves

Bookings and billings are improving month over month, but continue to show steep year-over-year declines, according to data from SEMI.

By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- Electronic News, 7/22/2009

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $323.4 million in orders in June and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.77, according to the June 2009 Book-to-Bill Report published this week by SEMI.

A book-to-bill of 0.77 means that $77 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

SEMI data

	Billings (3-month avg.)	Bookings (3-month avg.)	Book-to-bill ratio
January	$584.2M	$277.2M	0.47
February	$525.5M	$258.4M	0.49
March	$438.3M	$245.6M	0.56
April	$385.7M	$249M	0.65
May	$392.6M	$287.8M	0.73
June	$419.6M	$323.4M	0.77

SEMI's book-to-bill ratio has been on a steady increase since February, according to data from the organization.

“We are seeing improvement to the book-to-bill ratio due to slight growth in bookings," said Stanley T Myers, president and CEO of SEMI, in a statement Tuesday. “However for the equipment manufacturers, the market remains extremely difficult as customers are not yet at a point where additional capacity investments are needed.”

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in June was $323.4 million, SEMI reported, noting that the bookings figure is about 12% greater than the final May level of $287.8 million. Still, the figure is about 69% less than the $934.2 million in orders posted in June 2008.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in June was $419.6 million, just more than 7% greater than the final May level of $392.6 million, according to SEMI. Following the same trend as bookings, the billings figure was also down year over year at about 64% less than the June 2008 billings level of $1.16 billion.