Global chip sales show signs of life in March, rising 15% from February: BofA
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Semiconductor sales may still be in a downturn, but that downturn looks to be abating as Bank of America said March sales were slightly above the seasonal average but well above February levels. 
Citing data from the Semiconductor Industry Association, analyst Vivek Arya noted March chip sales were up 15% month-over-month and core semiconductors were up 8.4% over the same time frame, "as total/core-semis continue to display positive monthly growth following Januaryâs decline."
On a year-over-year basis however, March chip sales fell 19.6%, the ninth consecutive month of negative growth.
Arya added that analog was the strongest segment in March, rising 14.9% month-over-month, while discrete chips rose 10.2%. He also pointed out that memory sales surged, up 53% month-over-month, led by a 67.7% rise in NAND and 49% surge in dynamic random access memory.
By region, China and Asia Pacific continued to see sharp declines (down 28.6% and 20.2% year-over-year, respectively), while America and Japan fell 18.2% and 6.7% year-over-year, respectively. Conversely, Europe bucked the trend and saw 1.9% year-over-year growth.
Although demand is still slowing down overall, led by weakness in consumer markets, a number of chip companies have said there is likely to be a "measured recovery" in the second-half of the year, Arya noted. 
"We expect challenges to remain through [2023] yet remain optimistic for [long-term] market outlook given several structural, content-gaining trends including vehicle electrification, cloud infrastructure, factory automation/digitization, and 5G transition," Arya wrote in an investor note.
Last week, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) signaled the worst may be over for the company and that it expects the PC market to rebound in the second-half of the year.
Competitor AMD (AMD) is slated to report quarterly results after the close of trading on May 2. A consensus of analysts expect AMD (AMD) to earn 56 cents per share on $5.31B in revenue.
Related companies: AMD (AMD), Intel (INTC), Nvidia (NVDA), Texas Instruments (TXN), Analog Devices (ADI), ON Semiconductor (ON), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), GlobalFoundries (GFS), Micron Technology (MU)
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