To address your comment about the North American market, I'd like to add that the book-to-bill ratio is not a simple measure of whether the market is up or down.  It is a ratio that indicates the balance of supply and demand in the industry.  When the ratio is above 1.0, demand is outpacing supply, which is a leading indicator of strong sales in the coming 2 to 6 months.  When the ratio is below 1.0, demand is below the current supply and the opposite is true.  The ratio can be affected by both terms, orders and shipments.  It may go up because orders are up or because shipments are down, for example, so it's important to look at these statistics to understand what is behind the ratio.  Also, one month's ratio change is not significant as an indicator of where the market is going.  It takes at least three months of the ratio moving in the same direction before it is reasonable to identify a possible trend.

Sharon Starr
Director of Market Research
IPC
Tel: +1 847-597-2817
[log in to unmask]
www.ipc.org
________________________________________
From: TechNet [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of cguitar [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 6:24 PM
To: Listserv Technet
Subject: [TN] Book to bill ratio

the ratio is on North American market.

how is the ratio arrived at? only from NA board makers who are members of IPC?

how about the rest of the world, many of which are not members of IPC?

appreciate some input

tks,
th


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