Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Sans Souci who wrote (1053)	8/3/2000 4:50:20 PM
From: Just_Observing	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1184

Merrill Research confirms dip as buying opportunity. Here are the details: Semiconductor Capital Equipment • During the conference call with Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC, $14 13/16, D-1-2-9), the company mentioned they had push outs from a single customer in the quarter and they had three or four other customers that were probably going to place slightly smaller orders next quarter. As a result, Kulicke believes they will ship about 1600 bonders per quarter, which is the second highest amount in their history. We believe this is far from a weak market. • Kulicke’s weakness seems to stem from the fact that some of the companies that package chips are not getting as many finished wafers as they expected they would from the foundries. We know that the foundries have been doing extremely well, but their wafer growth was slightly lower than our estimates. This means that there is still constrained capacity on the front end. • We have checked with most of the major equipment companies in our sector and they continue to forecast very strong second half orders. For example, Teradyne (TER, $47 5/16, D-1-1-9), continues to see strong sequentially up orders for the September quarter. • We believe that what is happening at KLIC is an imbalance in the supply and demand chain between front-end wafer makers and back-end assembly companies. • We think that that the cycle is still intact and we will continue to see improving demand, rising prices and tightening supply for semiconductors in the second half. For example, yesterday, the semiconductor numbers for June came out. They showed an acceleration in month to month unit shipments and increases in average selling prices. This indicates fundamentally improving data for the front end side of the semiconductor industry. • We do not believe this signals the end of the cycle. (B. Hodess)