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The sales of circuit board manufacturers in November 2008 in Germany were at the lowest November level since the creation of the statistics. This was reported by the Association of the Circuit Board Industry and the German ZVEI Association of Electronic Components and Systems. Sales fell by 20.7 percent compared to the previous month, and by 26.8 percent compared to November 2007. This affected the accumulated sales which for the first 10 months had still been slightly above that of the previous year.
However, the accumulated sales for the first 11 months was 3.7 percent below that of the same period of the previous year. The orders received also fell to a low point not seen for some years. Whereas in the previous month orders were only postponed, November saw the first cancellations. Orders received in November were only half the value of those of October and 40 percent below those of the same month of the previous year. The Book-to-Bill ratio, with a value of 0.82, fell by a third compared to October. This is the lowest November value since 1994.