Wit Soundview Report on SIA
Semiconductors Industry
September 4, 2001
Scott Randall
Head of Semiconductor Research
Chris Caso
Associate Analyst
SIA April Data
The SIA reported three-month rolling average July billings Friday after the close. The data continues to show record-low year-over-year billings growth rates, as July billings were added and April billings were dropped from the rolling average.
Worldwide billings for July showed -37.2% year-over-year growth on a rolling average basis, down from -30.9% year-over-year growth in May.
Geographically, Europe showed the greatest three-month moving average sequential decline of -9.9%, while North America declined by 6.9%, Japan -4.8% and Asia-Pac -3.4%.
Single month data for July showed a month-over-month decline in both units and ASPs. For July, single month reported ASPs decreased by 17% to $0.41, while units decreased by 20.4%. Combined, single month revenues declined by 33.9%. As we have noted before, single month data tends to be volatile, with the first month of a quarter typically starting off more slowly than June, which was the last month of the June quarter.
Our view on the sector, as outlined in our upgrade note from early August, focused on improvements in inventory and demand that we expect will begin to occur as we move through the second half.
After visiting with 22 public and private companies last week as part of SoundView's seventh annual investor bus tour, we believe that an increasing number of companies are beginning to see early signs of increasing activity at their customers. While this early improvement will not translate into demonstrable revenue and earnings growth for the next several months, we continue to believe that fundamentals in the sector are bottoming.
We reiterate our belief that it is time for investors to take an overweight position in the semiconductor device sector, and in the communications, wireless and consumer electronics segments in particular. |
