Note the bold near the bottom, Stan.
North American Chip Equipment Orders Fall
Thursday October 17, 8:21 pm ET
biz.yahoo.com
SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - North American semiconductor equipment makers saw orders fall 19 percent in September from August as a slow rebound in the chip industry prompted chipmakers to hold back on capital spending, a trade group said on Thursday.
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Orders for semiconductor equipment -- the tools used to build, test and package microchips -- fell to $823 million from revised August orders of $1.02 billion, according to a monthly data report by San Jose, California-based Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International.
Shipments of previously ordered equipment fell 1 percent to $985 million from revised August figures of $995 million and was 2.5 percent above September 2001 billings of $961 million.
The ratio of orders to shipments, known in the industry as the book-to-bill ratio, was 0.84. A ratio higher than 1.0 means new orders outpaced shipments of equipment ordered in months past, and is seen as a measure of industry health.
"Announcements of lower bookings previously reported by semiconductor capital equipment manufacturers are now being reflected," said Stanley Myers, president and chief executive of SEMI said in a statement.
"As has been the case across the technology sector, the persistence of poor forward visibility continues to hamper the ability to forecast the timing of the next up-cycle in capital spending," Myers said.
On Tuesday, Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, cut its capital spending estimate to $4.7 billion in 2002 from $5.0 billion to $5.2 billion, while rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Wednesday, cut its 2002 capital spending forecast by $100 million to $750 million. |
