UMS Holdings

[Nick]

North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts April 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.08

http://www.semi.org/en/node/45831?id=highlights

I would think the ratio itself is quite meaningless for a trend analysis. What I find more intriguing is the continued increase in the value of the monthly order booking which indicates growing demand for capital equipment products. This is in line with the Management outlook and if May and June figures do not disappoint, 2Q results should be an improvement.

I guess this is why the share price has reacted positively and is currently trading at 50.5 cents (levels not seen since March 2012). This translates to a historic yield of 9.9%. The Company has generated 8 - 10 cents Net OCF per share over the past 3 years and paid out quarterly dividend.

(Vested)

Isn't that what the BB ratio is meant to be showing? ie. if it's >1, it's indicating a trend that the booking is more than the billing. So, if we see a continued trend in BB > 1, it's giving us an indication that there's a growing demand from the booking.

From investopedia,

Investopedia explains 'Book-To-Bill Ratio'

For example, a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10 implies that $110 of orders were received for every $100 of product billed during the period.

One of the best-known book-to-bill ratios is the monthly figure released by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute (SEMI). This is a three-month average bookings and billings figure for semiconductor equipment companies with headquarters in North America, and is a reliable indicator of trends in the worldwide semiconductor industry.


Note that altho' the Billings are real figures, the Booking figures can still change ie. since SEMI is using a 3-mth avg booking data, orders can be increased and reduced. Further, the integrity of the figures obtained by SEMI is greatly dependent on their market participants' data.

Anyway, I have recently increased my minute holdings and BB > 1 was one of the key decision factor.. I do hope and pray that Andy Luong is not going to spoil the party... If he were to kindly just hold on to his ever diminishing stake for long term, UMS share price ought to be a lot higher...

I do concur with what you say. A ratio greater than 1 indicates a better outlook. But I would think an order booking of $1 billion with billing of $1 billion (ratio = 1.0) is superior to order booking of $0.5 billion and billing of $0.4 billion (ratio = 1.25). Historically, the average book to bill ratio for FY 2008 and FY 2009 was 0.85 each. Yet the average order bookings was vastly different - FY 2008 average monthly booking was US$931.2 million and FY 2009 average monthly booking was US$506.3 million. It is no surprise that despite similar average monthly book to bill ratio, the annual UMS semiconductor revenue dipped from S$73.2 million to S$39.9 million in that period. That is why I prefer to look at the absolute figures instead of just the ratios. Currently, the monthly order bookings exceeds US$1 billion which is quite healthy though no where near the monthly FY 2010 figure of US$1.5 billion (coincidentally, the year of record revenue for UMS). Please correct me if I am mistaken.