Poor form continues in UK PCB market

Citation

(2000), "Poor form continues in UK PCB market", Circuit World, Vol. 26 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.2000.21726caf.002

Poor form continues in UK PCB market

Poor form continues in UK PCB market

Keywords: Electronics industry, Statistics

The last month of 1998 continued the poor form of the UK PCB Industry (Figure 1) with both sales and orders down on November. Month-on-month things improved as we moved into 1999. Both Sales and Orders rose in January and February month-on-month, though year-on-year the market remained down on 1998 levels.

The second quarter showed a strong upsurge in the industry. Orders showed strong growth on 1998 levels in each month, the largest coming in May, up by 25.8 percent. This was on the whole matched by the growth in sales, with increases in April and May of 5.6 percent and 15.6 percent respectively.

Orders continued to increase strongly on 1998 levels in quarters three and four, while sales fluctuated more. August saw sales grow by 19.7 percent, while the other two months fell. November and December sales both saw good growth, up by 4.9 percent and 14 percent respectively.

The book-to-bill of the UK industry has seen a poor start to the year, as the measure bottomed out in December 1998 and began to slowly increase. A steady improvement was seen throughout the first four months of the year. From April 1999, the book-to-bill turned "positive", reaching a level of 1.01 in May. From then on, the measurement has grown strongly, up in successive months until October 1999, when it reached a high of 1.14. From this peak the ratio has fallen back into the expected downturn of the cycle, down to 1.12 in November and 1.08 in December.

Overall, the last year has not been an easy one for the UK PCB Industry, but results have definitely shown an upturn in the latter half of the year.