May North American semiconductor equipment billings rise for second-straight month; YoY deficit shrinks
On June 20, SEMI shared data from its May Equipment Market Data Subscription Billings Report, which showed that North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted billings of $2.06 billion worldwide during May (on a three-month average basis). That figure is 7.4% higher than April's $1.92 billion, which was up 4.7% from March. North American semiconductor equipment billings had been down by at least 20% each month starting in January 2019 and an accelerating pace, but May finally showed a deceleration at a 23.6% deficit, compared to April's 28.5% year-over-year deficit.
For context, May 2018's billings figure of $2.702 billion was up 19% from a year earlier.
Here's how the past 13 months of North American semiconductor billings have fared, according to SEMI:
“Billings of North American equipment manufacturers increased for the second consecutive month,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “Expanding end-market applications continue to fuel demand for advanced semiconductors and the equipment necessary to manufacture those devices. However, market volatility continues due to the macroeconomic environment.”
The SEMI Billings report uses three-month moving averages of worldwide billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.
SEMI publishes a monthly North American Billings report and issues the WorldwideSemiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) report in collaboration with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ). The WWSEMS report currently reports billings by 24 equipment segments and by seven end-market regions. SEMI also has a long history of tracking semiconductor industry fab investments in detail on a company-by-company and fab-by-fab basis in its World Fab Forecast and SEMI FabView databases.
For more market input on the overall semiconductor market, check out Evaluation Engineering's June 17 post, "Mike’s Blog: Here’s what test vendors are saying about the semiconductor market"
