Mike Are you talking 1300 in Q2??? That is a 30% move above the last qtr. The following was posted in INFRASTRUCTURE on one of KLIC's competitors
On Nov. 21, we saw news that the ESEC Group, a manufacturer of automatic
assembly equipment, reported both record sales and earnings for the first
six months of the company's fiscal year, March 1 through Aug. 31. Being a
Swiss company, ESEC reports six-monthly vs. quarterly as we do in the US.
ESEC reported sales of CHF 217 million ($155 million US dollars, at an
exchange rate of 1.4 Swiss francs per dollar) versus sales of CHF 136
million (US $97.1 million) the previous year, an increase of 60%. At CHF 13
million (US $9.3 million), profits are already higher than reported by the
company for the entire previous fiscal year. ESEC noted that order
commitments are running ahead of the company's forecasts, and coupled with
the upswing in the semiconductor equipment market, is predicting that it
will achieve its objectives for the year of CHF 480 million in sales (US
$343 million) and profits of CHF 40-50 million (US $29 to $36 million).
ESEC is a stiff competitor to US public company Kulicke and Soffa Industries
(KLIC). Clearly, both companies are enjoying a very strong and healthy
demand for semiconductor assembly equipment. Both companies are developing
leading edge equipment and are getting into the potentially explosive
back-end automation arena. From a European investment perspective, ESEC is
one of the few interesting plays in the semiconductor equipment market.
From a US investment viewpoint, the strong ESEC results underscore the
re-bound opportunities which we have discussed for KLIC in the coming two
quarters. Neither company seems to be feeling the Asia-Pacific crisis at
present. We put this down to the fact that assembly capacity is constrained
and demand is strong. Asia, where much of the assembly is done, needs to
expand capacity to meet demand for this, one of its major exports.
This sounds very positive in my opinion. Don |
