Hi Joe,
Good to hear from you on the thread again. You have been absent for quite awhile. I can understand the reason, however, since you obviously had to spend a lot of time getting your new website up and running - audioinvestor.com Let me congratulate you on your effort. I think it has been a great addition in helping the individual investor. It continues to grow and get better all the time. I particularly appreciate the interviews with the CEOs of the technology companies - keep them coming!!!
I also know you have had FSII in your "model portfolio", in the Lone Start Growth Investor, for almost as long as the 3 years I have owned the stock. I thought the news release on Friday, in the URL below, was very provocative - certainly from the point of view of FSII's future. Just below the URL listing the entire article, I copied the part attributed to Mark FitzGerald, Merrill's semiconductor-equipment analyst. As you can read, he gives high marks to AMAT, NVLS and KLAC while he names the also-rans as LRCX, MTSN and FSII.
Since I don't work in the semi-equip business area, I get my impressions through the written word from the sources I can find - tech news, SI posts, SEC filings, etc. The present management has been there for some time and made them successful in the past. Have they lost the "golden touch"? It is probably true they over-extended at the wrong time, just prior to the "Asian Crisis", but in a business upturn which we appear to be entering, that means they have capacity in place to respond to the upturn in orders - or are we saying FSII is not going to see that much of an upturn in orders??
fnews.yahoo.com
<<"This idea that everybody is going to recover is dead wrong," said FitzGerald. "There are a whole host of companies that will not be able to reproduce their profitability of the last up cycle," which lasted roughly from 1990 to 1998. "We've seen a run-up in orders, but we've yet to see who will be profitable."
Winners, said FitzGerald, will be the equipment companies with unique products, like Applied Materials (Nasdaq:AMAT - news) , Novellus Systems (Nasdaq:NVLS - news) and KLA-Tencor (Nasdaq:KLAC - news) , each of which is up nearly threefold from its 52-week low. But the companies FitzGerald pegged as also-rans -- Lam Research (Nasdaq:LRCX - news) , Mattson Technology (Nasdaq:MTSN - news) and FSI International (Nasdaq:FSII - news) -- are up off their lows in similar fashion. Because each faces tough competitive issues, FitzGerald said he doesn't see the latter group as keepers, especially because cost-conscious Intel (Nasdaq:INTC - news) won't carry into the next decade the purchasing power it had in the 1990s.>>
Your thoughts on the entire situation would be most welcome. Also, how about an interview with Joel Elftmann, Chairman and CEO, and also according to FSII's web-site, he is "Acting Chief Business Development Officer". It would be great to hear from him on the future outlook for FSII, particularly since he wears 2 hats, CEO and New Business.
Any comments, or interviews with FSII personnel, would be most appreciated.
Best Regards,
Don W. |
