BANNOCKBURN, IL – The July 90-day moving average shipments of all types of circuit boards rose 4.7% year-on-year, and bookings rose 4.1%, according to the latest poll of North American PCB fabricators.

A large percentage of the production includes boards built offshore and distributed by North American vendors. According to IPC, 32% of the shipments reported were produced offshore, up from 26% in June.

The domestic book-to-bill ratio rose 0.03 points to 1.16. The ratio is based on data collected by IPC from rigid and flex producers and is calculated by dividing three months worth of orders by sales. A ratio over 1.0 is considered an indicator of rising demand.

The ratio for rigid PCBs was down 0.02 to 0.99, while that of flexible circuits rose 0.20 points to 1.71.

Rigid board shipments, estimated by IPC to make up more than 75% of all domestic PCBs, were down 2.7% in July vs. a year ago. Bookings fell 11.9% during the month.

Flex sales rose 32.7% and bookings jumped 53.3%. Value-added services made up 56% of the shipment value of flex circuits.

“July is historically a slower month than June for PCB sales,” IPC said in a statement. “Yet the book-to-bill ratios for flexible circuits and combined PCBs continued to rise in July, due to the spike in flexible circuit bookings in June and the trend for flexible circuit bookings to outpace shipments substantially, which continued in July.” 

Year-to-date, rigid shipments are down 6.4% and bookings are off 3.8%. Flex bookings are up 16.1% and shipments are up 25.6%. Shipments of all boards are down 0.2% and bookings are up 0.1%.

Sequentially, combined shipments were down 16.4 over June, while bookings fell 27%. Rigid shipments were down 19.4% and bookings were off 19%. Flex shipments fell 6.7% and bookings were down 37.9% over June.

Sixty-eight percent of PCB shipments reported was domestically produced. Domestic production accounted for 81% of rigid PCB and 32% of flexible circuit shipments in July, IPC said.

In a statement, IPC cautioned that month-to-month comparisons should be made with caution as they may reflect cyclical effects.