Jeffrey/all, a blast [?] from the past. I revisited AMAT posts of
October 1997 again. Early October the stock price was kind of flat.
Some saw that as a buying opportunity. Then prices plunged. It helps
me to remind myself how unsuspecting of disaster to come I was. Here
are some posts [unidentified, except for mine] from that time period.
Remember that SEMI orders had not peaked yet [notwithstanding the
statement in the article below].
geocities.com:80/WallStreet/5464/ord_prce.gif
A table of orders is at the bottom of this post.
2 year chart for reference...
tscn.com
Gottfried
How optimistic and unsuspecting some of us were...
From: +Gottfried
Wednesday, Oct 8 1997 5:38PM ET
from 1650 HOT JOBS to 2005 in a few days is good news! GM <eom>
From:
Tuesday, Oct 14 1997 2:23PM ET
I cannot believe the scared mentality!!! This is the best time to buy
AMAT and it will close strong as word trickles out INTC earnings are
robust.
Here comes a warning...
Thursday, Oct 16 1997 6:21PM ET
Shares of chip equipment makers fall on monthly report
sjmercury.com
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of Applied Materials Inc.,
KLA-Tencor Corp., Novellus Systems Inc., and other semiconductor
equipment makers tumbled on news of a decline in orders
and shipments last month.
The report, from the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials
International group, said the chip equipment industry posted a
book-to-bill ratio of 1.07 for the month of September, down from a
revised August figure of 1.09.
A book-to-bill ratio of 1.07 means that $107 in orders were
received for each $100 worth of products shipped. Book-to-bill ratios
are used by the industry as monthly indicators of demand.
Analysts pointed out that September is historically one of the
slowest months for capital equipment and in October, order rates
should show sequential growth again.
''It's misleading because even though it was down, you need to
realize that September has always been the trough month for the
book-to-bill,'' said Min Pang, a Cowen & Co. analyst.
''If history is anything to go by, then October should be up from
September,'' Pang said.
Investors are also nervous about semiconductor equipment stocks,
after recent third-quarter earnings disappointments by major
customers of equipment makers -- semiconductor firms such as
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Corp. and LSI Logic.
Shares of Applied Materials, the leading semiconductor equipment
maker, fell $3.94 to $45.125 in heavy trading on Nasdaq. KLA-Tencor
was down $4 at $62.44, Novellus Systems was down $2.875 at $58.50, and
Lam Research Corp. slid 62.5 cents to $41.875, all on Nasdaq. Those
companies comprise what is called the ''front-end'' segment of the
book-to-bill, which is made up of the wafer processing equipment
makers.
Analysts said the book-to-bill ratio is divided up in three
segments and the ratio for the biggest segment, the wafer
processing equipment companies that make up the front-end, was 1.02
for September, down sharply from 1.08 in August.
orders shipments btb
1996 JAN
FEB 1687 1243 1.36
MAR 1447 1256 1.15
APR 1361 1354 1.01
MAY 1187 1366 0.87
JUN 1175 1354 0.87
JUL 992 1311 0.76
AUG 882 1248 0.71
SEP 778 1119 0.70
OCT 833 1072 0.78
NOV 952 1062 0.90
DEC 1078 1069 1.01
1997 JAN 1116 1034 1.08
FEB 1101 1029 1.07
MAR 1265 1102 1.15
APR 1386 1261 1.10
MAY 1421 1299 1.09
JUN 1474 1375 1.07
JUL 1659 1476 1.12
AUG 1688 1536 1.10
SEP 1774 1672 1.06
OCT 1835 1793 1.02
NOV 1599 1598 1.00
DEC 1550 1559 0.99
1998 JAN 1363 1458 0.93
FEB 1233 1369 0.90
MAR 1123 1370 0.82
APR 1102 1416 0.78
MAY 1107 1361 0.81
JUNE 933 1266 0.74
JULY 718 1112 0.65
AUG 572 1012 0.57
SEP 481 846 0.57
OCT 638 852 0.75
NOV 767 932 0.84
DEC 869.2 895.2 0.97
1999 JAN 957.7 868 1.1 |
