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July Book-to-Bill Steadiness Encouraging, notes IPC
August 30, 2007 |Estimated reading time: 1 minute
BANNOCKBURN, Ill. The July combined rigid PCB and flex circuit book-to-bill ratio held just above parity at 1.02, shows the monthly North American PCB Statistical Program from IPC Association Connecting Electronics Industries.
"We are starting to see some signs of modest recovery in the North American PCB industry," notes Denny McGuirk, IPC president. While sales for the year are still behind those of last year by nearly 10%, McGuirk reported that "year-on-year rates are improving and backlogs are starting to go up," which are encouraging signs.
For rigid PCBs and flex circuits, industry shipments slipped 6.7 from last July, as did orders booked just 0.5%. Year-to-date, combined industry shipments are down 9.9%, and bookings are down 13.3%. Industry shipments for the month are also down 17.5%, and bookings declined 16.7%.
Rigid PCB shipments are down 7.1% and bookings are down 1.8% from July 2006. Year-to-date, rigid PCB shipments fell 10.4%; bookings fell 14.6%. The book-to-bill for the rigid PCB market was 1.02.
Flexible circuit shipments in July 2007 were down 0.8%, and bookings were up 24.6% compared to last year. Flexible circuit shipments dipped 2.1%, while bookings rose 9.1%, year-to-date. Compared to June 2007 statistics, flexible circuit shipments dropped 13.7%; bookings dropped 12.8%. While the flexible market decline, it still held above parity at 1.04 in July.
The rigid PCB segment highly affects book-to-bill ratios and growth rates for rigid PCBs and flexible circuits combined. Rigid PCBs represent about 88% of the current PCB market, states IPC's "World PCB Production and Laminate Market Report for the Year 2006."