Etch, I have been through this process before, ie, looking at the Bookings and Billings over a period of time to see how they compare. I think they track quite closely. Remember, there is a backlog component that we cannot know exactly, however, it seems reasonable to assume it is several billion dollars at any one point in time. Depending on whether business is on the rise, or fall, this backlog number will vary, but I could not find where it was "out of line".
One easy way to look at the Bookings and Billings numbers is to just add up the SEMI Bookings and Billings numbers from 1996 through 2004. The result is shown below.
-YR BOOK BILL
1996 13979 14711
1997 17868 16734
1998 10920 13914
1999 17581 15122
2000 32274 26017
2001 10798 16912
2002 10899 10890
2003 9592 9891
2004 17058 16309
TOTAL 140968 140500
As you can see, the 2 numbers are very close to each other over a 9 year period - less than 500M out of 140B+. Frankly, I find this remarkable given that SEMI, in cooperation with the companies they survey, take care and account for cancellations as they occur.
Don |
