North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment last month posted US$2.21 billion in worldwide billings, staying above US$2 billion for the sixth straight month, the trade association SEMI said in a statement on Thursday.
However, last month’s figure was 6.8 percent lower than US$2.37 billion posted in February, but 20.1 percent higher than US$1.84 billion a year earlier, SEMI data showed.
Last month’s billings showed that the manufacturers began to embrace a “challenging market environment” amid the COVID-19 pandemic, SEMI Taiwan president Terry Tsao (曹世綸) said in a statement.
“The annual increase indicates that companies in the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain still maintained relatively stable operations in March,” Tsao said.
The association last month said that global semiconductor equipment spending might fall 18 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year due to the coronavirus outbreak.
SEMI said that it is cutting its annual spending growth forecast to 3 percent for this year, down from its previous prediction of a 5 percent increase.
Most semiconductor manufacturers — such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC, 台積電), Samsung Electronics Corp, Intel Corp and Micron Technology Inc — rely on equipment produced by US companies such as Applied Materials Inc, KLA-Tencor Corp and Lam Research Corp.
Applied Materials on March 23 withdrew its financial forecast for this quarter, citing the effects of the pandemic on the company’s supply chain and manufacturing operations.
Intel Corp on Friday and Broadcom Inc on March 12 also pulled their financial projections for this year, citing uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
However, Xilinx Inc on Thursday did not provide specific guidance for this year.
Unlike other companies that withdrew their financial projections for this year, TSMC on April 16 provided investors with its full-year guidance.
The company said that it expected revenue to grow by 15 to 18 percent year-on-year on the premise that the COVID-19 outbreak would ease in June.
Despite near-term challenges, TSMC retained its capital spending at between US$15 billion and US$16 billion for this year.
Analysts said that TSMC has more exposure to 5G-related businesses than its competitors, and some of its tier-1 customers are still on track to migrate to advanced 5-nanometer chips in the second half of the year.
In addition, a tier-1 graphics processing unit customer of TSMC is set to launch new gaming platforms later this year, analysts said.
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