SAN JOSE – The 90-day moving average orders among North America-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers rose 1.4% sequentially in December. Orders were up 68% from a year ago, the SEMI trade group said.

The book-to-bill ratio fell 70 basis points to 0.90, meaning that $90 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month. A ratio above 1.0 is considered a sign of future expansion.

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in December 2010 was $1.53 billion. The three-month average billings was $1.7 billion, up 8.7% from November and twice that of December 2009.

“Orders for new semiconductor manufacturing equipment placed by worldwide customers to North American manufacturers remained constant while billings edged upward in comparison with our last report,” said Stanley T. Myers, president and CEO of SEMI.  “The continued pace of billings reflects the strong order rate that persisted at record levels through most of the last year.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

Source: SEMI January 2011