it looks like intel was stuffing the channels after all
Worldwide Chip Sales Fell 31% in June, Group Says (Update1)
2001-08-02 11:46 (New York)
Worldwide Chip Sales Fell 31% in June, Group Says (Update1)
(Adds analyst comment starting in first paragraph.)
San Jose, California, Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Worldwide
semiconductor sales fell 31 percent in June because of slowing
economic growth and excess inventories, a trade group said. That's
the biggest drop in the industry's history, an analyst said.
Sales fell to $11.6 billion from $16.7 billion in June 2000
and declined 8.8 percent from May's $12.7 billion, according to a
statement from the Semiconductor Industry Association. The drop was
steeper than a previous record 26 percent decline in October 1985,
Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jonathan Joseph said.
Chipmakers from Intel Corp. to Texas Instruments Inc. have
been hurt this year as orders for chips powering mobile phones and
computers slump and prices fall. As their customers work through
stockpiles of chips, semiconductor makers such as
STMicroelectronics NV have said a rebound may occur by year-end.
``While the magnitude of the trough is slightly greater than
we had originally anticipated, we continue to believe that the
timing of the bottom of this cyclical downturn will occur in the
next few months,'' Joseph wrote in a note to clients.
SIA President George Scalise said in the statement that chip
industry sales may pick up again in the fourth quarter.
The forecast comes after Merrill Lynch & Co. yesterday raised
its outlook on the semiconductor industry, saying the worst was
over. Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett today repeated that he
expects a recovery in the computer industry in the third and fourth
quarters.
June sales in the Americas fell 45 percent from the year-
earlier period. They dropped 27 percent in Europe, 25 percent in
Asia-Pacific and 20 percent in Japan.
The San Jose, California-based association has said it expects
a 14 percent decline in worldwide chip sales this year and predicts
sales will rise 21 percent in 2002.
--Jad Mouawad in the Paris newsroom at (331) 5365 5076 or
jmouawad@bloomberg.net and Cesca Antonelli in San Francisco at
(415) 743-3532/eds/jac
Story Illustration: To chart the recent performance of the
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, see {SOX <Index> GP <GO>}. |
