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

To: Kirk © who wrote (33298)	11/20/1999 1:04:00 PM
From: KLINVESTOR	Respond to of 70976

Kirk, Like the other semi-companies Cohu cash flow is impacted by the fairly volatile swings in sales. For example, this year sales have been ramping up very rapidly and therefore they have increases in their accounts receivables (for the increasing sales), increases in inventories (more materials needed for the significant increases in sales) and not nearly as much increase in payables. Therefore, their cash position has not increased during calendar year 1999 which as strange as it sounds is good news. Go back to 1998 when sales were dropping pretty rapidly due the slump Cohu had a significant increase in their cash position for just the opposite reason. That being they collected all of their accounts receivables, liquidated their large inventory position, and therefore were just waiting around until the next boom. That boom has arrived! Cohu has significantly higher increases in BTB, quarter over quarter sales/bookings increases, and a very dominant position in their niche which is semi-equip test handling. They make the handlers which the testers made by Teradyne and others go into for the final testing process. Cohu dominants this segment and maintains good relations with TER, Schlumberger, and Agilent (HP Spin off) which make the testers. Cohu has great finances, great growth, dominant market position, and their only negative is they are very underfollowed by the analyst community even though they are of relative good size. Check it out! Good luck.