North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment last month reported a book-to-bill ratio above parity for the sixth straight month, indicating that the global semiconductor industry was on track to recovery, the latest report by industry association SEMI said yesterday.
The ratio — one of the leading indicators used to gauge the health of the global semiconductor industry — reached 1.03 last month after recovering and surpassing 1 in July last year, the report issued by Taiwan SEMI said yesterday.
A book-to-bill ratio of 1.03 means that US$103 worth of orders was received for every US$100 of product billed for the month.
“Semiconductor capital equipment bookings and billings continued steady growth into December 2009,” Stanley Myers, president and CEO of SEMI, said in the report, adding that “the ratio has been above parity for six consecutive months as the industry increases spending on technology and fills out capacity to produce semiconductor devices.”
The three-month average of worldwide bookings rose 9 percent month-on-month, or up 49 percent year-on-year, to US$863.3 million last month, while billing rose 13.2 percent month-on-month, or up 25.3 percent year-on-year, to US$842.2 million, SEMI said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, said yesterday it had placed a NT$504 million order to buy a batch of new manufacturing equipment from Applied Materials South East Asia Pacific Ltd.
TSMC can now only meet about 80 percent of customer orders on its 12-inch fabs amid strong demand from its major graphic, baseband and LCD TV controller customers, Citigroup analyst Andrew Lu (陸行之) said in his report issued early this month.
Lu said TSMC was adding more equipment to meet surging demand and has accumulated more than US$4 billion in orders this year.
Separately, a report by market researcher Gartner Inc showed that Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s No. 2 PC maker, squeezed into the world’s top 10 biggest semiconductor buyers last year, helped by growing market share.
Acer climbed two notches to ninth position last year from No. 11 in 2008, the report said.
“Consumer demand is shifting from high performance to portability and affordability, and this trend accelerated Acer’s growth in 2009,” Gartner said.
Against the downtrend, Acer and Apple Inc were the only two electronic device makers among the top 10 firms that had increased chip demand last year, it said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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