Front End | Electronic Components Supply Network


UK electronic components market - crazy semiconductor orders


It’s always unfortunate when negative predictions come true, but that’s what’s currently happening in the electronic components supply industry: Members of the Electronic Components Supply Network (ecsn), foresaw that manufacturer lead-times for electronic components, particularly semiconductor products may begin to extend exponentially in Q1’26 and that their customers (system integrators) could start to scramble to place new order cover with suppliers. According to ecsn chairman Adam Fletcher, this is not good news for buyers


or their suppliers as it might herald a long period of uncertainty for both. “Inordinate effort is and will continue to be expended throughout our industry on expediting delivery of a comparatively small range of semiconductor and passive components,” Fletcher said. “Of more concern is that it’s obvious some customers are also placing duplicate orders on multiple suppliers, a bad practice that will only result in inflated inventories followed by large order cancellations, which will cause further pain across our industry.” In this article, Fletcher provides CIE readers with the background data on the current situation and suggests what needs to happen now.


T


hroughout 2025 I cautioned that UK based customers were failing to place sufficient order cover with their suppliers compared to their peers in other geographic markets, and that they should consider modest increases to overcome any possible difficulties with supply. My concern was that if global economic activity improved and manufacturers’ lead-times for electronic components remained elevated or for any reason started to extend beyond the then current average of 16 weeks, UK customers could experience supply shortages.


Inadequate orders or forecasting Ideally, manufacturers of electronic components and their authorised distribution partners would prefer customers to provide a rolling six- to nine-month order coverage, supported by a reasonably accurate long-term forecast of their organisation’s anticipated demand. Unfortunately, in the last few years most customers have been unable to provide either. As a result, component manufacturers have struggled to effectively allocate their existing assets, let alone plan future investment in manufacturing capacity. It’s not surprising therefore that investment by electronic components manufacturers and their authorised distributors has been severely restrained.


Change - dramatic order increase The ‘green circle’ in the graphic All Industrial Components demonstrates the reason for


10 April 2026


seem a long time ago!) a B2B in the range 1.05:1 to 1.1:1 would have been considered ‘normal’ and indicative of a solid industry growth cycle. The ‘red circle’ in the graphic reveals an outcome significantly beyond our members’ expectations. The overall B2B ratio for all components jumped to 1.37:1 in February ’26, and looks likely to continue into March ’26 and Q2’26. The graphic Semiconductors to Industrial


Market covers the past two years and reveals that the B2B outcome over the last 17 months has been fairly consistently below unity. In January ’26 (circled in red) however the B2B ratio for semiconductor products climbed to 1.1:1 before going ballistic in February and climbing to 1.67:1,


my concern. The “blue line” is the B2B ratio which compares monthly ‘Bookings’ (New Orders) to ‘Billings’ (Invoiced Shipments) and shows that this ratio has consistently been well below unity (=1) throughout most of 2024 and 2025. This suggests that many customers consistently failed to provide sufficient order cover with their suppliers to meet their production requirements despite extending manufacturer lead-times. In their forecast for 2026 released at the beginning of December last year ecsn member companies forecast that both Booking and Billings should increase in line with the overall UK economic activity in Q1’26, unless there was a supply network issue. In November and December, the B2B ratio did improve to 1.1:1. In normal times (and they


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