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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Duker who wrote (31713)	8/3/1999 9:07:00 AM
From: cluka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

AMAT 3-Aug-99 8:38 AM Reiterate Buy - Hambrecht & Quist LLC

To: Duker who wrote (31713)	8/3/1999 11:25:00 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Copied from the INTC thread. Apparently even convicts buy PC's:-) ****************************** Australian PC Market Has A Record Quarter... August 3, 1999 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, Newsbytes : Australia's PC vendors shipped a record 537,088 units in the second quarter, ended June 30. The figure represents a 15 percent increase on the same period a year earlier - according to IDC Australia. It's the largest number of PCs shipped in any quarter in Australia since IDC began tracking the market, the market watcher says. It notes the number of PC shipped during the quarter was greater than the total annual market in 1992. Compaq retained number one position, while Dell, Hewlett Packard and Gateway all recorded growth in excess of 50 percent over Q2/1998. IDC said. Precise market percentages have yet to be confirmed. IDC analysts Rupinder Toora and Logan Ringland say the result is due a number of factors including price reductions resulting from the Intel-AMD processor war; creative bundling and pricing deals, some allied to Internet access programs; a spike in small business purchasing; and small business's move into e-commerce.

To: Duker who wrote (31713)	8/3/1999 4:35:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Duker, Intel is about to select a PVD tool. o The selection of the copper barrier/seed PVD tool of record at Intel is imminent. The contenders are Applied Materials and Novellus Systems. We think that the odds are better than 50-50 that Novellus will win this bake-off or at least split the business. o PVD is estimated to be a $1.2 billion market in 1999. AMAT dominates the segment with >80% market share. AMAT's Endura PVD tool is one of the most successful products in the company's history, perhaps the industry's history, in our view. o A win at Intel by Novellus would be big news because it would go a long way to supporting street estimates that are now moving north of $3.00 in CY'00. In our own model we estimate that Novellus will sell about $30 million in PVD in CY'99 and $100 million in CY'00. o Novellus System remains one of the least expensive names in the group. The company has a deep pipeline of new products above and beyond the new PVD system. We are re-iterating our $100 price objective. Fundamental Highlights: o Intel is abandoning its "copy exact" manufacturing strategy. Where ever possible the manufacturing group is trying to qualify two vendors in order to win the best pricing. A second PVD vendor at Intel would likely knock as much as $1million off the $3-5 million average selling price of the Applied Materials system. We think that is reason enough for Intel to qualify Novellus assuming their tool is competitive. from a recent ML report. Gottfried

To: Duker who wrote (31713)	8/5/1999 9:26:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

UMC to upgrade Nippon Foundry fab, double output by year's end A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc. Story 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m., PST, 8/5/99 HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Silicon foundry supplier United Microelectronics Corp. here plans to spend more than $200 million to upgrade the wafer fab it acquired in Japan last year from Nippon Steel Semiconductor Corp., according to UMC President H.J. Wu. The investment is part of expansion plans announced recently. At that time UMC president Wu said UMC is installing quarter-micron processing at the 8-inch fab in Chiba, Japan, which will be used to service logic and memory foundry customers. UMC has renamed its Japan operation Nippon Foundry Inc. UMC said it hopes to double chip output from Nippon Foundry fab by the end of the year. The Nippon Foundry investment is part of $1 billion budgeted in 1999 by UMC for capital spending in all of its fabs. 204.247.196.14