很不平静的无源器件市场

无源器件市场硝烟不断。事实上，在这个对价格高度敏感、竞争激烈的无源器件市场中的幸存者可能需要比其它任何高科技领域中的公司掌握更多的摸爬滚打经验。

自20世纪90年代以来——当时有许多台湾和中国的低成本小型公司进入这个市场，无源器件领域就经历了严酷的价格战和快速的产品普及。这场残酷的竞争降低了这一领域中许多西方国家企业的排名，大部分实力不济的公司因而退出市场，只有那些比较强大的公司在这个赢利挑战极其艰巨的环境中存活了下来。

这种严酷的竞争环境至少在不远的将来还将存在。虽然一些最大的无源器件供应商近年来对不断变化的市场条件作出了快速反应，但仍面临艰巨的挑战。

随着原材料成本的不断攀升，价格压力也是与日俱增，迫使还没有退出无源器件市场的这些公司一起采取复杂的圈地策略和多样化的产品布局，甚至有公司增加了有源器件。

为了区别于低成本、低门槛的常规供应商，一些顶级供应商，如AVX、京瓷、村田和Vishay，已经开始提高研发和其它产品开发费用。他们还闯进了小型竞争公司很难渗透的领域，如航空、国防和医疗市场。

策略的昂贵转移发生在OEM用户要求让价的时刻。

另外，OEM商希望减少工业观察人士所谓的“接触”因素的呼声越来越高，并且设备供应商在将更多的库存管理功能转移到供应商和分销商那里，以便控制他们自己的成本。无源器件供应商曾受益于这种组织，但是，随着竞争向高端市场的转移，越来赶多的竞争对手对来自供应链管理的优势置入惘望。

今天，无源器件供应商发现销售势头在上升，由于某些领域出现了严重的供应短缺，甚至出现了某些价格坚挺的现象。但一些警惕的执行官仍在坚持执行2008年晚些时候推出的重组计划，当时全球经济正处于低迷时期。

“许多工作已经达到这个地步，从成本下降到我们的操作过程中不发生一点浪费，以及我们策略方向的转移。”Kemet Electronics公司首席执行官Per Loof在公司12月份结束并且结果有很大改善的季度报告中指出，“随着我们继续满足不断增加的市场需求，这些成本中的大部分不会返回。”

下一页：无源器件制造商的成本削减恶梦

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事实上，无源器件制造商似乎还没有走出从2001年来形成的成本削减恶梦，尽管他们的产品继续在电子设备中得到普及。无源器件是这个产业的步兵。每种技术产品，不管如何简单或复杂，都需要无源器件——电容、二极管、电感或电阻，并且通常是用改进的负载。

然而，几乎在电子供应商经过了许多老手仍然认为行业年报最糟糕的10年后，实际上所有无源器件供应商正在经历另一轮工厂合理化、设备再布置和明显降薪运动，而所有这些运动都是由于最近的经济衰退引起的。

Vishay Intertechnology公司是决定走在成本下降曲线前面的典型公司之一。2009年，公司的收入下降了28%，从前年的28亿美元减少到20亿美元，虽然Vishay公司在过去10年中对业务作了充分的多样化，现在有约一半的年收入来自半导体产品。去年Vishay公司的无源收入下降了24%，从2008年的14亿美元减少到了10亿美元。

“我们度过了很糟糕的12个月。市场状况真是可怕极了。”Vishay公司执行副总裁David Valletta表示，“这是25年来我在这个产业中见到的最糟糕的情况。”

AVX公司(日本京瓷公司的一个部门)的情况也十分类似。AVX公司的收入在2009年3月结束的财政年度下滑了14%，从上个财政年度的16亿美元减少到14亿美元。实际的无源器件收入降幅小少，为9.4%，从前年的9.58亿美元减少到了8.68亿美元。在同一时期总的净收入从2008财政年度的1.5亿美元下降到了8,100万美元。

这次衰退的严重性堪比2001年，虽然那时的衰退效应在一些公司表现得更加突出。无源器件的行业总销售额在2009年3月结束的财政年度减少了18%，到2010年3月下降幅度又增加4%，Paumanok Group公司总裁、公司拥有者Dennis Zogbi预测。

持续重组

当Vishay公司从2001年开始采取一系列成本控制措施时，它雇佣的劳动力有43%在高劳动力成本国家，有57%在低成本地区。到2009年底，公司在低成本国家(如中国、捷克共和国、印度、马来西亚、墨西哥和菲律宾)的劳动力比例上升到接近75%。

“我们的长期目标是在较低劳动力成本的国家中的人数占75%至80%之间。”Vishay公司在最近的美国证券交易委员会申请中表示。

Vishay公司在申请书中表示，上述举动的主要原因是“现有产品平均售价的永久走低是我们产业的典型特征。”最新的成本控制步骤是“电阻产品从巴西转移到印度和捷克、将比利时和美国中的某些工艺转移到第三方转包商。”

Vishay公司还把一些生产从荷兰和美国转移到以色列。

除了一落千丈的成本外，Vishay声称改善了后勤和支持服务，同时扩大了产品线。像AVX和Vishay等公司开发的许多较高端产品瞄准了西方市场，并且所在的技术领域还没有被低成本亚洲制造商完全开发。

下一页：主动出击

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“我们准备将自己定位于更低成本的公司，将把更多的无源产品转移到中国和印度。”Vishay公司的Valletta表示，“同时，我们不想过多地依赖较低成本的市场。”

在问题再次爆发之前，这样的举动将在短期内缓解产业问题，无源器件市场的观察人士指出。Paumanok Group公司的Zogbi在最近的报告中表示，“自从2001财政年度以来，美国在消费品方面减少了约一半…大部分转移到了中国。”

Zogbi补充道，“北美自由贸易区中的无源器件消费将继续缩减。”虽然这个地区的利润比其它市场要高。

要想繁荣这个市场，产业经理们认为，无源器件供应商必须走出削减成本的框框，要寻求与OEM、EMS提供商和其它第三方支持合作伙伴开展进一步供应链合作。这种合作将让所有参与者降低产品获取成本，Vishay公司的Valletta表示。

在当前供应商驱动的供应链管理情况下，无源器件供应商经常不主动出击，直到用户需要他们——即使产品本身存储在OEM或EMS供应商处。Valletta暗示，供应商必须保持“接触”到自身的最末端，虽然还清楚如何做到这一点。

“到目前为止，用户已经通过将负担转移到供应商推进了许多库存管理程序或发货程序。”Valletta指出，“我们要一起做的是必须指出一条更好的道路，通过尽可能少的接触无源供应链中的产品将成本扣除。否则价格中将不得不增加额外的成本。”

也许这是供应商与用户开展这种讨论的最好时机。经过可怕的两年后，对无源器件的需求再次爆发，而且一些产品已经在配售。AVX、Kemet和Vishay等制造商通过在标书中增加个性化的东西来提升产能利用率，而仅在一年前某些情况下的产能利用率还不到50%。

例如，由于需求开始超过供应，Kemet公司去年增加了1,000个以上的雇员，Kemet公司首席财政官Bill Lowe表示。单在12月结束的第4季度，公司就增加了500位雇员来提升产能利用率，并有望继续“提升产能以满足市场需求。”

这就是无源器件市场，今天的热门需求在数周内就可能跌入冰点，因此Kemet公司不打算使产能呈爆发式增长。

“我们不想脱离实际市场和需求，”首席执行官Loof表示，不过Kemet公司“专注于满足用户需求。”

下一页：参考原文(Lots of action in passives, by Bolaji Ojo)

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Lots of action in passives

by Bolaji Ojo

The knives are never sheathed in the passive components market. Indeed, survival in the highly price-sensitive, intensely competitive passives sector may require more thrusting and parrying, slashing and whittling than in any other high-tech segment.

Since the mid-1990s, when a raft of small, low-cost players in Taiwan and China swept into the market, the passives segment has experienced severe price erosion and rapid product commoditization. The savage competition decimated the ranks of Western companies in the sector, driving out most of the weaker players and leaving even the stronger companies battling for survival in an intensely profit-challenged environment.

The tough competitive conditions will remain in force at least for the immediate future. While the biggest passives vendors adapted swiftly in recent years to changing market conditions, huge challenges remain.

Price pressures have grown intense even as raw-materials costs have risen, forcing those companies that have not withdrawn from the sector altogether to engage in complex hedging maneuvers and diversify their offerings, even adding active components in some cases.

To differentiate themselves from lower-cost, low-barrier, commodity vendors, the top suppliers, such as AVX, Kyocera, Murata and Vishay, have boosted R&D and other product development expenses. They have also moved into areas that smaller rivals have difficulty penetrating, such as the avionics, defense and medical markets.

The expensive shifts in strategy have come at a time when OEM customers have been demanding price concessions.

What’s more, OEMs’ desire to reduce what industry observers call the “touch” factor has increased, with equipment vendors moving more inventory management functions to suppliers and distributors in an effort to limit their own costs. Passives vendors once benefited from such initiatives, but increased rivalry has dulled the edge gained from supply chain management as the competition has sought to move up-market.

Today, passives suppliers are seeing rising sales and even some strengthening of prices as supply shortages spike in certain segments. But wary executives are still doggedly moving forward with the reorganization programs put in place late in 2008, when the global economy cratered.

“Much work has gone into reaching this point, from cost reductions to a full court press on ‘leaning’ out waste in our operations, as well as shifts in our strategic direction,” Per Loof, Kemet Electronics Corp.’s CEO, said in a presentation on the company’s much improved results for the December-ended quarter. “The majority of these costs will not return as we continue to meet increasing market demand.”

Indeed, it seems passives makers have not stepped off the cost-cutting treadmill since 2001, despite their products’ continued ubiquity in electronic equipment. Passives are the foot soldiers of the industry; every technology product, no matter how simple or complex, requires passive components-capacitors, diodes, inductors or resistors-and typically by the bushel load.

However, almost 10 years after electronics vendors experienced what many veterans still consider the worst downturn in the annals of the industry, virtually all passives vendors are staggering through yet another round of plant rationalizations, facility relocations and sharp payroll reductions, all kicked off by the recent recession.

Vishay Intertechnology Inc. is a classic example of a company determined to stay ahead of the cost-reduction curve. In 2009, the company’s revenue fell 28 percent, to $2 billion from $2.8 billion in the previous year, even though Vishay has extensively diversified its business over the past 10 years and now generates about half its annual sales from semiconductor products. The company’s passives revenue fell 24 percent last year, to $1 billion from $1.4 billion in 2008.

“We’ve been through a heck of a 12-month period. Market conditions were horrendous,” said David Valletta, executive vice president at Vishay (Malvern, Pa.). “They were the worst I have seen in 25 years in the industry.”

The story is similar at AVX Inc., a unit of Japan’s Kyocera Corp. The company’s revenue slid 14 percent in the fiscal year that ended in March 2009, to $1.4 billion from $1.6 billion in the prior fiscal year. Actual passives revenue was down a smaller 9.4 percent, to $868 million from $958 million in the previous year. Total net income fell to $81 million during the same period from $150 million in fiscal 2008.

The severity of the latest downturn certainly matches the decline witnessed in 2001, although the effects are more pronounced at some companies. Total industry sales of passive components sank 18 percent for the fiscal year ended in March 2009 and fell an additional 4 percent by March 2010, according to estimates from Dennis Zogbi, owner and president of the Paumanok Group.

Continuous restructuring When Vishay began implementing a wide range of cost-control measures in 2001, it employed 43 percent of its workforce in high-labor-cost countries and 57 percent in low-cost regions. By the end of 2009, the percentage of the company’s work force in low-cost countries such as China, the Czech Republic, India, Malaysia, Mexico and the Philippines had risen to almost 75 percent.

“Our long-term target is to have between 75 percent and 80 percent of our head count in lower-labor-cost countries,” the company said in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The primary reason behind the move, Vishay stated in the filing, is the “perpetual erosion of average selling prices of established products that is typical of our industry.” Among the latest cost-control steps are the transfer of “resistor products from Brazil to India and the Czech Republic and the transfer of certain processes in Belgium and the United States to third-party subcontractors.”

Vishay also moved some production from the Netherlands and the United States to Israel.

In addition to slashing costs, Vishay claims to have improved its logistics and support services while broadening its product lines. Many of the higherend products developed by companies like AVX and Vishay are destined for Western markets and are in technology areas that are yet to be fully explored by low-cost Asian manufacturers.

“We’ve tried to position ourselves as lower-cost players by transferring more of our passives production to China and India,” said Vishay’s Valletta. “At the same time, we’ve tried not to be too dependent on lower-cost markets.”

Such moves will relieve the industry heartburn for a short while before the problem flames up again, passives market watchers said. Zogbi of the Paumanok Group wrote in a recent report that “the Americas have shrunk by about half [their] size in terms of consumption value since fiscal 2001 . . . with the value transferred mostly to China.”

Zogbi added that “the footprint for consumption of passive components in the North American Free Trade Area will continue to shrink over time,” although margins in the area will be higher than for other market regions.

To thrive in the sector, industry executives said, passives suppliers will have to move beyond cost-cutting and seek further supply chain collaboration with OEMs, EMS providers and other third-party support partners. Such collaboration would let all participants cut the cost of product acquisition, according to Vishay’s Valletta.

Under the current, supplier-driven supply chain management scenario, passives vendors often keep parts on their books until the customer needs them-even when the products themselves are stored at the OEM or EMS provider’s site. Valletta suggested that suppliers must keep “touch” to a minimum at their own end, although it is not clear yet how to do so.

“Up until this point in time, customers have driven a lot of the inventory management programs or consignment programs by shifting the burden to suppliers,” Valletta said. “What we have to do together is figure out a better way to take cost out by touching the products as little as possible in the passives supply chain; otherwise, the additional cost would have to be built into the price.”

This is probably the best time for suppliers to initiate such discussions with their customers. After two harrowing years, demand for passive components is surging again, and some products are already on allocation. Manufacturers like AVX, Kemet and Vishay are adding personnel in a bid to boost production capacity utilization, which only a year ago had tumbled below 50 percent in some cases.

Kemet, for instance, added more than 1,000 employees over the last year as demand began to exceed supply, according to Bill Lowe, the company’s chief financial officer. In the December-ended quarter alone, the company added more than 500 employees to lift capacity utilization and said it expects to continue to build “capacity at levels required to meet market demands.”

This being the passives market, where today’s hot demand can turn icy cold within weeks, Kemet is not planning an explosive surge in capacity.

“We will not get out ahead of the market and demand,” said CEO Loof, but Kemet is “focused on meeting our customers’ needs.”