Semiconductor Inventory Situation

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 15, 11:06AM EDT · Published Mar 27, 11:34AM EDT

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By William Trent, CFA of Stock Market Beat

After yesterday’s Agere (AGR) preannouncement, we decided to update our research on semiconductor industry fundamentals. This has been made easier since we received a complimentary trial of Zacks Research Wizard.

We first note that days inventory on hand at 39 semiconductor companies listed on public markets in the U.S. improved slightly in the December quarter. This improvement is in line with normal seasonality, as the holiday season is typically marked by strong sales of consumer electronics and the inventory moves away from the manufacturer toward the end user. On a year/year basis to more accurately reflect the seasonality, the days inventory on hand rose.

Next we turn to orders for new semiconductor equipment, which when installed will increase capacity still further (thus lowering utilization still further.) The new equipment orders continue to rise at a much faster rate than the end demand for semiconductors.

So there you have it – on an industry-wide basis things are bad and appear likely to get worse. We’ll finish things off with a list of the companies whose days inventory grew year/year:

Zacks Investment Research has provided Stock Market Beat with a complimentary trial subscription to Research Wizard.

http://www.stockmarketbeat.com/

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.