Everyone's looking for the bottom (May Update)

Shereen Vaux

Order activity for semiconductor equipment continued to trend lower, slipping to a new low for the year. Overall activity has fallen below the 2019 lows and it’s still looking for the bottom. There were some notable changes made to our forecasts this month. ICs were downgraded, electronics forecast was downgraded slightly, while the Semiconductor Equipment Forecast remains unchanged. The April sales from the Taiwanese manufacturers are in and it is clearly still gloomy out there. However, there were some bright spots found in this update: Even though overall inventories remain at elevated levels, we are beginning to see some improvement of inventories at the electronics OEMs.