More upside surprises at Applied?
One of the big surprises of the past week was delivered by Applied Materials Inc., which beat Wall Street's expectations by posting a 16% sequential increase in sales to $1.16 billion and a net income of $52 million in the company's fiscal Q2 period, ended April 28.
The results prompted Applied chairman and CEO James Morgan to declare that he's beginning to see the first phase of a recovery in the semiconductor industry (see May 15 story).
And fiscal Q3 looks promising for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip-equipment giant. In fact, orders are already flowing in from a number of chip makers.
"In our view, July quarter orders [for Applied] could come from TSMC's 300-mm fabs (Fab 12 and 14), Micron's 300-mm pilot, TI's DMOS 6, UMC (Fab 12A), Intel fabs 11x, Powerchip phase II, and others," according to a report from Prudential Securities Inc. this week.
Applied is especially benefiting from Taiwan Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). The U.S. company reportedly received a $200 million order from TSMC (see April 8 story).
But some believe that the order is bigger than previous thought. "We estimate about $700-to-$800 million in tool orders [from TSMC] could go to Applied Materials," according to the Prudential Securities report. "With about $150 million or so placed to date, there remains $550-to-$650 million in orders from TSMC alone, or on average of $200-to-$240 million per quarter," report added.--M.L. |
