Jerome - My perception, along with numerous other observers of Klic (some provided in the links in my previous post), is that the stock remains grossly undervalued.
One poster on the Yahoo thread (kburg_klic), who appears to be well informed, predicted last November that the stock would be above $100 by April. In January, he repeated this and predicted Klic will close the year between $150 and $200.
Outrageous? Perhaps. However, the stock is currently ($61) trading at a PE of 19.7 for anticipated FY2000 earnings and a PE of 14.2 for anticipated FY2001 earnings. To get an idea of what a discount this is to other stocks in the sector (and recall that Klic's market-share dominance far out paces 90% of it peers), please refer to this post made 2 weeks ago by 'crystalcharisma' on the Yahoo board messages.yahoo.com. Even though stock prices have changed somewhat since then, I'm quite sure the relative valuations remain quite similar.
Thus I believe kburg_klic's predictions are, surprisingly, not outrageous at all (at $100/share, the 'implied' PEs are: FY2000 = 32.3; FY2001 = 23.2. Both of these are STILL significantly below the industry average).
Klic's discounted valuation was reinforced once again yesterday when ABN AMRO reiterated their 'buy' on the stock and commented '...shortages of assembly equipment are likely to provide additional upside potential for KLIC's sales for 1Q00/2Q00.'
Best wishes,
Scott |
