AMAT - I always stayed away because it seemed like it's customers (semi makers with fabs) were getting more and more and more concentrated, as every year more semiconductor companies reduced spending on fabs and instead outsourced production to foundries.
I thought over time that's gotta be bad. AMAT is going to end up left with only 3-4 big customers (Samsung, TSMC, Sk Hynix, Intel, who else? I thought it rapidly declines in terms of capital equipment spending when you get past the big boys).
But customer concentration doesn't seem to have slowed them down. And now with all the big countries trying to have their own local domestic chip production, things may actually be turning the other way, or at least the way to look at is is not by AMAT's customer but by region where a fab is being built.
I do wonder which small semi capital equipment companies have the "hot system" of the future that will grow 3x general equipment spending over the next ten years. That's gotta be out there somewhere, but it takes more industry knowledge than I possess to identify the small cap well positioned future winners.
AMAT, KLAC, LRCX they all have stock charts that do a "rocket to the moon" take off from about 2015. I wonder what happened then that made everything so wonderful?
I own NVMI which is a small cap also doing a moon shot. Don't ask me what exactly the do, but it's something in semi cap equip.
And I own AEHR, which (hopefully) will do a moon shot for the next ten years, if their space takes off as they forecast. Lets see....... |
