Chart 1: Nine-Month Sales Growth Percentage
(Year Over Year)
0
5
10
15
20
25
11 EMS providers 9 ODMs 20 CMs combined
20.4%
12.1%
2.0%
INSIDER
Manufacturing Market
Vol. 21, No. 12 December 2011
inside the contract manufacturing industry
TM
Some articles in this issue
Cover story.............................................................................1
Respectable sales growth for the top 20 CMs.
North American Group Not Keeping Up.............................4
Q3 and Nine-Month Results from Asia................................5
Upbeat Forecasts..................................................................7
News......................................................................................8
Although year-over-year growth in
Q3 slipped into single digits for the
top 20 contract manufacturers, their
sales for the first nine months of 2011
still increased at a double-digit rate.
Top-20 sales for the first three quarters
totaled $235.4 billion, up 12.1% from
the same period a year ago. But as de-
mand in various markets continues to
ratchet downward in Q4, doubts have
arisen about where the full year will
end up.
The top 20 contract manufacturers
consist of 11 EMS providers and nine
ODMs, who together account for the
vast majority of sales in the outsourc-
ing space. (It’s hard to put a number
on the top 20’s share, but MMI be-
lieves that it’s well north of 80%.)
Double-digit growth for the top 20 in-
dicates that outsourcing was alive and
well through first nine months of the
year despite the sovereign debt prob-
lems in Europe and a sluggish US
economy.
Yet when it came to growth, the 11
EMS providers presented a far better
picture than the ODM group did.
Nine-month sales of the 11 EMS pro-
viders totaled $138.8 billion, up
20.4% year over year. In contrast, the
ODM group’s sales of $96.6 billion
rose just 2% from a year earlier (Chart
1). Hence, the EMS group grew 18.4
percentage points faster than the
ODMs did over the first three quarters.
As has been written here before, the
Double-Digit Growth through Three Quarters
PC market, which had
once fueled superior
growth for the ODM
sector, has put a
damper on ODM
growth in 2011.
Note that the top
20 contract manufac-
turers presented here
contain two changes
from the 20 large CMs
tracked earlier for Q1
and Q2 (Sept., p. 1-3).
EMS provider Shen-
zhen Kaifa Technol-
from 12.1% (Chart 2, p. 2). So Hon
Hai was responsible for 6.7 percentage
points, or more than half, of the Top-
20 growth rate. Likewise, the EMS
group’s growth rate looks less impres-
sive without Hon Hai. Sans Hon Hai,
EMS group sales would have in-
creased by 11.7% instead of 20.4%.
So Hon Hai added 8.7 percentage
points to the EMS group’s growth rate.
Still, even without Hon Hai, the re-
ogy has been added to the group,
while ODM Inventec Appliances has
been removed. With these changes,
MMI believes it has assembled the 20
largest CMs.
Gargantuan Hon Hai Precision
Industry (aka Foxconn), which repre-
sented 34.7% of top-20 sales, weighed
heavily on collective results. Exclud-
ing Hon Hai, nine-month growth for
the 19 other players drops to 5.4%
Chart 2: Nine-Month Sales Growth Percentage
(Year Over Year) Excluding Hon Hai
0
5
10
15
20
25
10 EMS providers 9 ODMs 19 CMs combined
11.7%
2.0%
5.4%
2 Manufacturing Market Insider, December 2011
maining 10 EMS providers were 9.7
percentage points of growth ahead of
the ODMs (Chart 2).
At 27.4% in US dollars, Hon Hai’s
nine-month growth rate earned first
place among the top 20. Of the seven
CMs that achieved US-dollar growth
rates in double digits, only two were
ODMs. Yet ODMs made up a majority
of the CMs whose nine-month sales
dropped in US dollars. Five out of the
seven companies with sales declines
were ODMs (Table 1 below).
Top-20 net income for the first nine
months totaled about
$3.9 billion. (The total
is approximate because
not all companies fol-
low the same account-
ing rules.) But net
income performance
was out of step with
sales growth as net
earnings declined by
around 15%. Just four
companies succeeded
in improving their nine-
month net income, and
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3Manufacturing Market Insider, December 2011
three of them were EMS providers –
Celestica, Flextronics and Jabil Cir-
cuit (Table 1, p. 2). Quanta Comput-
er was the only ODM able to raise its
net profit from the year-ago period.
For Q3, the top 20 combined for
sales of $84.3 billion, up 7.1% sequen-
tially and 8.8% year over year. Hon
Hai did not affect these results much:
The company raised the sequential rate
by less than percentage point and the
year-on-year result by less than two
percentage points (Table 1).
Q3 growth rates of the EMS and
ODM groups were not that far apart.
On a sequential basis, the ODMs’ Q3
revenue grew 8%, somewhat better
than the EMS group’s 6.5%. On the
other hand, EMS group sales in Q3
rose 9.5% year over year, topping the
ODMs’ 7.9% (Table 2 above). EMS
providers’ Q3 sales of $49.5 billion
accounted for 58.7% of the top-20
total.
The top 20’s increase of 8.8% year
over year in Q3 signals a slowdown
from Q1 and Q2 growth rates of
15.4% and 12.8% respectively. None-
theless, eight CMs achieved double-
digit growth in Q3, led by Pegatron at
47.7% (in US dollars). Partly offset-
ting these gains were year-over-year
sales declines at nine CMs, nearly half
the top 20 (Table 1).
On a sequential basis, four compa-
nies produced double-digit sales in-
creases in Q3, and three of them were
ODMs. Sales fell or remained flat at
seven CMs, of which five were EMS
providers (Table 1).
The 20 CMs together earned net
income of approximately $1.5 billion
in Q3. Compared with the prior quar-
ter’s total, Q3 net profit went up about
18%, more than twice the rate of sales
growth. A majority of the top 20 im-
proved their net income from Q2 to
Q3.
But a year-over-year comparison
for combined Q3 net profit is not so
favorable. Net profit in the quarter
dropped by about 9% versus revenue
growth of 8.8%. Only four CMs suc-
ceeded in growing their net income
from the year-ago quarter (Table 1).
MMI compiled quarterly operating
margins for eight out of the nine
ODMs in the top 20. (ODM TPV
Technology was left out of this analy-
sis because it does not report results
consistent with those of the other
ODMs.) For Q3, overall operating
margin for the eight ODMs was a mere
0.88%, virtually the same as the prior
quarter’s 0.87% and down from 1.8%
in the year-ago period. By contrast,
five large US-traded providers collec-
tively generated a GAAP operating
margin of 2.6% for Q3 (Nov., p. 2).
Aggregate operating margin for the
eight ODMs has sunk to a level that
makes EMS margins look almost rich
by comparison.
ODM operating margins in Q3
ranged from -1.14% for Inventec to
4.16% for Ability Enterprise. Out of
the eight ODMs, only Ability Enter-
prise and Compal Electronics had Q3
operating margins above 2%.
What’s more, Q3 net margin for the
ODM group ended up about 110 basis
points below that of the EMS group.
The ODM group’s margin was around
1.1% compared with the EMS provid-
ers’ margin of around 2.2%. Q3 net
margin for the entire top 20 came in at
approximately 1.7%, up about 10 basis
points sequentially but down about 40
basis points year over year.
One can rank the top 10 CMs by
nine-month sales and compare that
order to the 2010 standings (May, p.
2). Table 1 lists CMs in order of nine-
month sales. That order has Hon Hai
and Quanta in first and second place,
as they were in the 2010 standings.
Flextronics has moved up one rank to
third position, replacing Compal,
which dropped to fourth place. Fifth
through tenth remained the same as
last year, the order being Wistron,
Jabil, Pegatron, Inventec, TPV and
Celestica. This order based on nine-
month sales is the same one that result-
ed from ranking companies by
first-half sales (Sept., p. 3).
Editor’s note: This analysis pre-
sents a rough approximation of EMS
versus ODM sales since a number of
the contract manufacturers listed here
do both EMS and ODM work. Compa-
nies were classified as EMS or ODM
based on which model represents their
primary business. In addition, sales of
some EMS providers include non-
EMS revenue from such activities as
component-level manufacturing.
Correction: Due to a misinterpreta-
tion of Pegatron’s financial statements,
the Q1 and Q2 net income figures for
Pegatron’s DMS business in Table 1
on page 3 of the September edition
represent profit before taxes. Net prof-
it results presented for the Pegatron
business in this month’s Table 1 on
page 2 correspond to net income after
taxes.
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N. American Group
Not Keeping Up
So far this year, sales growth for a
group of nine mid-tier and smaller
EMS providers based in North Ameri-
ca has not kept up with the rate at
which revenue has increased for the 11
largest EMS providers. For the first
nine months of 2011, sales for the
North American group totaled $1.6
billion, up 3.5% year over year. In
contrast, top-11 sales for the period
grew at a 20.4% clip (see Chart 1 on
p. 1). Even if one took a conservative
approach and removed Hon Hai Pre-
cision Industry from the top-11 com-
parison, the North American group
still lagged the rest of the top 11 by
8.2 percentage points (Chart 2, p. 2).
Despite the anemic single-digit re-
sult for the North American group
overall, five providers achieved dou-
ble-digit growth for the first three
quarters, led by IEC Electronics and
Sparton at 33.1% and 31.1% respec-
tively (table below). Two providers –
Kimball Electronics Group and
SMTC – saw their nine-month sales
decline from the year-ago period. For
the seven providers that report net in-
come for their EMS operations, only
two – IEC and Nortech Systems –
boosted their nine-month net earnings
from a year earlier (table).
Q3 sales of the nine North Ameri-
ca-based providers came to $506 mil-
lion, down 5.5% sequentially and
4.4% year over year. Four of the nine
recorded sequential declines in their
Q3 sales. On a year-over-year basis,
revenue growth ranged from -32.6% at
SMTC to 28% at IEC. Compared with
the year-ago quarter, four providers
grew their Q3 sales at double-digit
rates, while three endured revenue
drops (table).
The group of nine mid-tier and
smaller providers consists of six com-
panies in the EMS space, all publicly
traded, and three EMS units within
larger publicly held corporations. To-
gether, the six stand-alone providers
produced a Q3 gross margin of 11.4%,
down 50 basis points sequentially and
90 basis points year over year. Three
out of the six companies achieved two-
digit gross margins (table).
Q3 operating margin for the six-
company subset amounted to 2.4%,
down from 5.1% a year earlier. IEC
was the margin leader at 7.1%. On a
year-over-year basis, only one provid-
er in the subset, Nortech, improved its
operating margin. In addition, two of
the EMS units – CTS Electronics
Manufacturing Solutions and Raven
Industries’ Electronic Systems Divi-
sion – raised their segment operating
margins from the year-ago quarter (ta-
ble).
Combined Q3 net income for the
six stand-alone providers was $4.3
million, up from $1.5 million in the
prior quarter but down from $10.9 mil-
lion in the year-ago period. Their ag-
gregate net margin for Q3 came in at
1.6%.
Some salient snippets
CTS Electronics Manufacturing
Solutions, a unit of CTS. Q3 sales
were lower than Q2 levels in all mar-
kets except defense and aerospace.
5Manufacturing Market Insider, December 2011
Segment operating earnings in Q3 im-
proved from the prior quarter, despite
2% lower sales, because of higher
gross margins and a $2.7-million in-
surance recovery. Compared with the
year-earlier quarter, demand increased
in defense and aerospace, communica-
tions and industrial markets, partially
offset by lower sales in computer and
medical markets.
IEC Electronics. The company
reported that funding for several of its
programs in the military/aerospace
sector have not been released. IEC
anticipates that funding release will be
an issue for the December quarter and
may extend into the following quarter.
This sector represented 56% of sales
in fiscal 2011 ended Sept. 30.
The company expects revenue
growth from its existing businesses to
be between 9% and 14% for fiscal
2012. This outlook is below IEC’s
long-term goal of 17% annual growth.
Key Tronic. During its fiscal Q1
ended Oct. 1, the company achieved
the highest quarterly sales in its histo-
ry. Gross margin, which dropped to
7% from 9% in the year-ago quarter,
was affected by product mix changes
as well as expenses associated with
several steep new program ramps.
For fiscal Q2, the company expects
sales of $75 million to $80 million and
EPS of $0.15 to $0.20, both of which
suggest sequential increases.
Kimball Electronics Group, a unit
of Kimball International. September
quarter sales decreased 20% year over
year as sales to medical and industrial
control customers fell. Kimball attrib-
uted the decline in medical sales to the
expiration of a medical contract, the
loss of which accounted for a $38-mil-
lion drop in medical sales versus the
year-earlier quarter. A 12% sequential
decline in September quarter revenue
was also driven by lower medical and
industrial control sales.
Kimball is closing its EMS facility
in Wales (UK) as part of a European
consolidation effort planned in 2008
and is also shuttering its EMS facility
in Fremont, CA.
Nortech Systems. Q3 revenue
grew 9% year over year, while nine-
month revenue increased by 18%. The
company said revenue growth was led
by its industrial and medical custom-
ers, strongly aided by its two most re-
cent acquisitions. Operating income in
Q3 was $420,000, compared with
$166,000 in the year-ago period.
Macroeconomic uncertainty has
affected Nortech’s customer base,
most significantly in semiconductor
capital equipment. However, demand
is increasing from defense customers.
Raven Industries’ Electronic Sys-
tems Division. Sales for the quarter
ended Oct. 31 went down 3% year
over year, while operating income was
relatively flat. The division continues
to see a decline in its avionics-related
business. Raven said it can count on
this division to be a consistent genera-
tor of strong cash flows. It is also get-
ting more internal manufacturing
business from Raven’s Applied Tech-
nology Division.
SigmaTron International. Given
the continuing margin pressures in the
EMS industry, the company was
pleased to report that it remained prof-
itable for fiscal Q2 ended Oct. 31. As
the company has been reporting for
some time, it is experiencing