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

To: Duker who wrote (33539)	12/21/1999 10:46:00 PM
From: 16yearcycle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Duker, I think you covered it well, and those comments by management have increased my knowledge. Perhaps this would be a great inv on the dip.

To: Duker who wrote (33539)	12/21/1999 10:47:00 PM
From: A. Edwards	Respond to of 70976

Nov. BTB Reflects Underlying Strength In Industry: While November's total bookings increase of 6% was inline with our forecast, we believe actual bookings were actually much stronger. The bookings numbers are 3 month averages and given that September was a weak month at $1,511 million, we believe that actual November bookings were quite strong to lift the 3 month average to $1,704 million in November. In addition, Applied just completed its fiscal year in October and we believe this may have created a slight lull in November. The back-end was particularly strong, with bookings rising 9% to $456 million after two consecutive months of down bookings (Sept. and Oct down 3% seq.). We believe the November's bookings numbers reflect the resurgence of capacity buys in the industry. Foundries are full and aggressively adding capacity (TSMC and UMC expect to increase wafer capacity by 50% in 2000) while IDMs are also adding capacity. This was exemplified by Novellus' strong orders in 4Q99 (up 45-50% seq.), which were driven primarily by a surge in capacity buys (copper is not expected to ramp until 2H00). We believe that other equipment suppliers (i.e. AMAT, KLAC, and LRCX) will see similar strength in 4Q99 bookings given that these companies will benefit from a combination of capacity buys and new products. We expect most equipment stocks to gradually trade towards higher trading ranges over the next 3-4 months given the positive bookings trends and the strength in the semiconductor sector. --An excerpt from SSB morning notes 12/21/99.