Components distributors in Europe have continued to enjoy a healthy business for more than 2 years now.
Overall macro-economic conditions seem to play only a minor role at the moment. Even currency effects, which dominated some of the growth in 2015, have been reduced to normal. The sum of all this amounts to an 8.4% growth in Q1/CY2016 compared to Q1/CY2015 for European Semiconductor Distribution, according to DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists). The quarter ended with record sales of 1.93 Billion Euro.
Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS: “We have, for the time being, entered a very stable market environment, with little friction from currency effects and very little effects so far from weak markets in Asia, especially China. Q1/CY16 ended surprisingly well, with 8.4% growth. After last year’s double-digit growth, we would regard this as normalization. Considering the positive booking situation, we would expect strong first half year 2016.”
Regionally, it was positive to note that Italy and Germany, the two biggest sales regions within DMASS, contributed over-proportionally to the quarterly growth. Germany ended Q1 with a plus of 11.7% at 606 Million Euro, Italy with a plus of 19.9% at 198 Million Euro. Eastern Europe continued on its long-term growth path and grew by 15.3% to 265 Million Euro (without Russia). The UK market suffered from its own currency problems and reported -0.4% decline to 147 Million Euro. France grew by 4.6% to 144 Million Euro and the Nordic countries experienced a comparably steep decline of 7.7% to 163 Million Euro.
Georg Steinberger: “The biggest surprise is certainly the resilience of the Italian distribution market. And the fact that Germany “recovered” after several quarters of sub-par performance is also a good sign. It will be interesting to see if these trends continue further into the year.”
On the product-side, DMASS reported double-digit growth in Sensors, Opto, Memories, MOS Micro Logic and Standard Logic. Analog products, by far the biggest segment, ended almost spot on, with 8.7% growth to 579 Million Euro. MOS Micro grew by 10.2% to 394 Million Euro, Opto by 15.5% to 202 Million Euro, Memories by 12.7% to 156 Million Euro and Sensors (key product for automotive and IOT) by 16% to 42 Million Euro. A negative surprise was Programmable Logic, which stayed flat at 140 Million Euro. Discretes and Power Discretes saw under-proportional growth of 1.4% to 101 Million Euro and 3.1% to 184 Million Euro respectively.