November Chip Equipment Orders Post Gains
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Tuesday December 21 10:44 AM ET
November Chip Equipment Orders Post Gains
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (Reuters) - North American
semiconductor equipment makers posted solid growth for
November, receiving an average of $110 in orders for every
$100 of products shipped, according to preliminary data
reported late Monday by trade group Semiconductor
Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
By contrast, an average of $108 in orders was received for
every $100 in shipments during October. Investors use this
''book-to-bill'' data, which reflects a three-month moving
average of the ratio of bookings to billings, to gauge the
industry's growth prospects.
Bookings rose to a record $1.70 billion, up 6 percent from
October 1999, and 122 percent above the $767 million posted in
November 1998, SEMI said.
November bookings in absolute dollar terms were 4 percent
higher than the previous record high of $1.63 billion set in
November 1997, the industry highpoint before a sales slowdown
set in for the notoriously boom-to-bust chip industry.
''Semiconductor manufacturing equipment bookings posted an
all-time monthly high in November,'' Stanley Myers, president
of SEMI, said in a statement. ''The growth pattern in
semiconductor sales and the increasing adoption of new
technologies has helped drive continued strength in the
equipment market.''
Shipments in November were $1.5 billion, which was 4 percent
above the October 1999 level and 69 percent above the
November 1998 shipments level of $913 million, the trade
group said.
With chip demand forecast to accelerate 15 to 20 percent in
1999 and 25 percent in 2000, chipmakers are increasing capital
budgets to buy, build and equip production facilities, wrote
Kathryn Buegert, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston, in a
research note.
Merrill Lynch analyst Mark Fitzgerald said in a note to clients
that there were $112 worth of bookings for so-called front-end
equipment used by chipmakers in manufacturing and process
automation for every $100 of such products shipped.
Meanwhile, ''back-end'' equipment used to assemble
semiconductor components to test finished products had a
bookings to billing ratio of 1.05, he said.
Applied Materials Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMAT - news), the
dominant player in the industry, and the leading maker of
front-end production equipment, rose 2-15/16 to 119-1/4 on
the Nasdaq stock market.
Meanwhile, other large front-end equipment makers such as
Novellus Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:NVLS - news) and Lam
Research Corp. (NasdaqNM:LRCX - news) saw their shares
slip after Monday's heady gains which followed Novellus'
announcement Friday that its business was booming.
Teradyne Inc. (NYSE:TER - news), a leading maker of
semiconductor testing equipment, gained 2-1/8 to 54-7/8 on the
New York Stock Exchange. |
