Sparky,
It's not often FSII leads the group of semi-equip stocks in percentage gain. I look at the results most days and I can remember only one other time in the last many months that has happened - if you haven't seen it, you can see it at:
www3.techstocks.com
I still feel very positive about the stock and am hanging on as a long term investment. FSII did two things IMO that has resulted in their relatively poor performance over the short term, but I think will really pay off in the long term. Number one, during this past downturn, they invested in adding a lot of plant capacity. Number two, they kept their R&D expenditures high which should help in the long run. Now they have the plant capacity to go to the next level of sales and have used R&D to establish new products.
They also seemed to be making some good tatical moves by adding key personnel and partners that should help them in the marketing and distribution arena.
Adding the plant capacity and keeping R&D expenditures high caused FSII to have a strong downturn in earnings over the past year culminating in making the last quarter, a "loss quarter". Almost no other "strong semi-equip" company pushed their commitment that far that resulted in a loss quarter. Most of them had several down quarters, but not a loss quarter.
I think the market is really waiting to see some positive results, whether it be a quarterly earnings report that beats estimates, or a large bookings and backlog increase. I don't want to predict how it is going to turn out, because I really don't know, but I am looking forward to the remainder of this year to find out. To me it is "exciting times". For the forseeable future, I am going to hold on to my shares and hope the orders start rolling in.
One of the things you can do to really help, however, is to keep saying every day you are going to sell your shares <g> - we need all the help we can get!
Regards,
Don W. |
