Folks, this is great stuff; here's what jumps out at me:
1. Quarterly earnings 4 pennies above expectations. Very good.
2. Mgmt issuing guidance during conference call that should
result in some upwards earnings revisions and upgrades by the Street.
3. Book-to-bill above 1.1, means next quarter should be great.
4. Hints of AMAT taking away market share from other players
such as Lam.
5. Margins improving (46% vs 44.5% last qtr)
I don't know about you guys, but I sure as hell am glad to be long
on this stock, and today I just saw more reason to stay long for
a very long time to come.
Moreover, I've held for over a year now, and my
experience has been that mgmt has always been honest and fairly
accurate with their guidance. If mgmt says business is great and
issues good guidance, then I'm going to believe them.
In particular, I like seeing comments like these...
talking about leading-edge products, enthusiastic customer reaction,
industry is growing, and mgmt excited about the future:
"We are excited about our recent shipment of the industry's first 300mm production wafer processing system and the
shipment of our 5,000th single-wafer, multi-chamber system. Our recent product introductions have created a unique
portfolio of leading-edge technologies for the 0.25 micron generation purchases that are now a significant part of our
business. In April, we launched the Dielectric Etch IPS Centura, which is the industry's most advanced oxide etcher
for 0.25 micron and below devices. Our metal and silicon DPS etch technology is also showing very strong gains for
0.25 micron production. In CVD (chemical vapor deposition), we are ramping production of our Ultima High Density
Plasma Centura system to meet the rapid customer acceptance of this technology.
"The PVD (physical vapor deposition) business is strong and customers are qualifying the recently introduced IMP
(ion metal plasma) barrier technology, and the Cool Aluminum PVD/CVD process. After its first full year in the
market, the RTP (rapid thermal processing) Centura has achieved market leadership and customers are placing repeat
orders for multiple units of our Mirra CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) system. Overall, we expect increasing
demand for the Company's products as our customers ramp up their production lines," Morgan said.
"The outlook for the remainder of fiscal 1997 continues to be positive and we remain focused on leveraging our
resources to better serve our customers' need for leading-edge technology and global support. There are tremendous
long-term opportunities resulting from the increasingly pervasive use of semiconductors in electronic devices and the
industry's transition to larger substrate sizes and smaller device geometries. We are moving quickly to extend all of
our process technologies to the coming 300mm wafer size and we are committed to maintaining our leadership
position in the semiconductor equipment industry," Morgan concluded.
The only short-term worry is what were whisper numbers? My guess is
they were higher since AMAT has surprised on the upside for three
straight quarters now? Perhaps stock may stay flat or even go
down tomorrow; if that happens though I'm backing up the truck
and loading up. (Probably on leaps or intermediate-term calls
since I'm running out of cash.)
I'm sticking to my 1-year price target of 100...
don't put your shorts on just yet!
DOM |
