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Technology Stocks : JMAR Technologies(JMAR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gooch who wrote (8266)	8/12/1999 1:03:00 AM
From: real_time99	Respond to of 9695

Kind of depends on how you look at it. Do you care more about growth in sales or growth in profits? Obviously we want both, but given where the Semiconductor operation was until last year (old Cal ASIC), I kind of like comparing the $5.5 million of sales for the first half of 1999 at the Semiconductor unit to the $356K that it had in the first half of 1998. The operating profit of $223K for 1H99 vs. loss of (189K) for 1H98 is also a good trend. The company clearly states in this 10-Q that the government margins (which applies to the JSI unit) are lower than the commercial margins. That's why they say they are pursuing standard commercial semi products in the telecom markets. I'm sure most of us will take a "seeing is believing" attitude on whether the semi operation succeeds in doing this, but it clearly is the correct strategy. Your comment that the 1st qtr operating income at JSI was 4x the 2nd Qtr op. income isn't quite right; the segment chart you may have been referring to in the 10Q is showing the operating profit for JSI for the entire first half (total of $225K) and the operating profit for just the 2nd Qtr. ($55K). So the 2d qtr was only about a third of the first qtr. But again, there is no question that JSI has greatly ramped up its sales. Now it has to go after higher margins from commercial chips with the base it has created with the govt work. It's clear that JMAR's problem now is being able to get back its margins (and profitability) from either its precision business or from the introduction of new spin-off products from its other two divisions.