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IPC Releases New Book-to-Bill Ratios and IMS/PCB Business Report for August 2004
October 5, 2004 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Northbrook, Ill.—The IPC Association Connecting Electronics Industries announced the findings from its monthly PCB Statistical Program.
The North American PCB Industry Book-to-Bill Ratio for August 2004 continued positively at 1.04. This ratio is based on monthly data collected from both rigid PCB and flexible circuit producers that participate in IPC's monthly PCB Statistical Program. Separately, the book-to-bill ratios in August 2004 were 1.05 for rigid PCBs and 0.98 for flexible circuits.
The ratio is calculated by dividing the value of orders booked over the past three months by the value of sales billed during the same period from the companies in IPC's survey sample. A ratio of more than 1.00 suggests that current demand is ahead of supply, which indicates probable near-term growth.
For rigid PCBs and flexible circuits combined, industry sales billed (shipments) in August 2004 increased 33.6% from August 2003, and orders booked increased 9.8% from August 2003. Compared to 2003, shipments of PCBs are up 34.7% year-to-date, while bookings of PCBs are up 38.0% year-to-date. Combined industry shipments for August 2004 are up 13.8% over the previous month, and bookings are down 0.3% over the previous month.
Both rigid and flex shipments are rebounding from the recession and are showing strong growth, but flex is growing at a faster rate than rigid.
Rigid PCB shipments are up 21.9%, and bookings are up 8.7% in August 2004 from August 2003. Year-to-date, rigid PCB shipments have increased 25.1%, and bookings have increased 21.1%, compared to the same period in 2003. Rigid PCB shipments from the survey sample increased 15.2% from the previous month, and rigid bookings increased 7.6% from the previous month.
Flexible circuit shipments are up 75.2%, and bookings are down 19.3% in August 2004 from August 2003. Year-to-date, flexible circuit shipments have grown 77.4%, and bookings have grown 100.7%, compared to the same period in 2003. Compared to the previous month, flexible circuit shipments from the survey sample increased 8.5%, and flex bookings decreased 27.1%.
Flexible circuit sales, which include some value-added services in addition to the bare flex circuits, represent about 17% of total PCB sales in IPC's survey sample, which IPC considers to be representative of the industry. It is difficult for most flexible circuit manufacturers to break out value-added services, such as assembly, from their circuit sales. Therefore, the amount of value-added services included in this industry segment's sales is not known.
Year-on-year and year-to-date growth rates provide the most meaningful view of industry growth. Month-to-month comparisons should be made with caution, as they may reflect cyclical effects. Because bookings tend to be more volatile than shipments, changes in the book-to-bill ratios from month to month may not be significant, unless a trend of three consecutive months or more is apparent.
The information in IPC's monthly industry statistics is based on data provided by a representative sample of both rigid and flexible PCB manufacturers in the U.S. and Canada. IPC publishes the PCB Book-to-Bill Ratio and the Interconnect Manufacturing Services (IMS) Business Report each month. Statistics for the previous month are not available until the last week of the following month.