Jerome, I think the management team at VECO is actually excellent, it has managed to get through that whole last semi cap recession without damaging its balance sheet. It stayed profitable, exploited the market weakness at the right time to do some acquisitions, completed the absorption of these with minimal problems, the only "faults" so far, IMHO, was less then "perfect" handling of the secondary (still, however, they increased existing shareholders book value), and some tactical errors causing some decline in their relationship with IBM, and particularly some problem with the AFM line due to that. Apart of these two, I doubt they missed a beat. They are associated with the DD and these are in deep S&*^t, and thus the current weakness in the price, I believe. I think the market may punish then because of the less than 1 BTB and the expectation of less than robust growth of the top line from here over the short term.
Zeev |
