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Technology Stocks : Mattson Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (2416)	1/13/2000 11:01:00 AM
From: Q.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3661

Before 1998, Brad was often quoted talking about the inevitability of industry consolidation and how he anticipated that it would lead to a small number of large players in the front end business. The frequency of his comments of this nature suggested to me that he anticipated that Mattson would eventually be acquired. You are right that it's largely up to Brad to determine what is a price he likes, and I would agree that at 19 we are probably not near that point. Now if you were to talk about paying double the current market price, as AMAT did for ETEC, I don't know whether that would be high enough for Brad or not. Acquisitions tend to happen during upcycles when most stock prices happen to be high, which I think partly accounts for the timing of the ETEC acquistion by AMAT. However, one thing that makes MTSN less appealing than ETEC as an acquisition is that MTSN has lots of overlap with the product lines of AMAT & NVLS. I would guess that MTSN is not at the top of anybody's list for acquisitions, just because of this factor. I'm just curious: aside from the big three U.S. front end companies, is there anybody else who could bid for MTSN? Tokyo Electron, for example, or is that just too unlikely to ponder?