May 29, 2018, bannockburn, Illinois, USA - IPC - international association for electronic industry connectivity? Today, we released the north American PCB industry survey report for April 2018. The report showed that north American PCB orders and shipments grew at a slow annual rate in April. The ratio of orders to shipments fell but remained strong at 1.08.

Total north American PCB shipments in April 2018 increased by 8.8% compared with the same period last year. Shipments so far this year are up from 9.6% a year ago. Shipments fell 14.0% in April from a month earlier.

In April 2018, PCB orders increased 2.9 percent compared with the same period last year. Year-to-date orders are up 12.8% from last year. Orders fell 16.2% in April from a month earlier.

"After three consecutive quarters of recovery, north American PCB sales and orders slowed in April, indicating normal growth," said Sharon Starr, IPC's director of market research. After peaking in the last month of each quarter, growth typically slows in the first month of the next quarter, as it did in April. "The outlook for this year is still good, given the strong growth in orders last year and the ratio of orders to shipments has been above average 1.0 for 15 consecutive months.

Explanation: the growth rate of June 2017 has been adjusted due to changes in the sample of the research project.

The report details

The new north American PCB industry survey and statistics report will be published in August. In an upcoming report including the IPC for detailed data of the statistics in the first quarter of the PCB industry, including: rigid PCB and flexible PCB sales, orders and their respective book-to-bill ratio, different size of the company growth, and military industry, the condition of the growth of the medical market, demand model and other important real-time data.

Data interpretation

Order shipping ratio is the ratio obtained by dividing the order volume of the sample company participating in the IPC research project by the sales volume of the same period in the past three months. A ratio above 1.00 indicates that current demand exceeds supply, indicating that sales will increase over the next three to 12 months. If the ratio is less than 1.00, the current supply is greater than the demand.

The year-on-year growth rate and the growth rate since the beginning of the year are of guiding significance for exploring the development trend of the industry. The quarter-on-quarter data need to be treated with caution as they are subject to periodic and short-term changes. The order data are more volatile than the shipping data, and the change in the order delivery ratio between the month and the month is less important, unless there is a significant change trend over three consecutive months. It is equally important to explore the reasons for the changes in orders and shipments as well as to understand the changes in the ratio of orders to shipments.

IPC's monthly PCB industry statistics are based on regular local data provided by representative samples of rigid and flexible PCB manufacturers in the United States and Canada. IPC will issue monthly PCB order shipping ratio and PCB statistical project report. The monthly report will be released in the last week of next month.