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.

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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (36368)	8/8/2000 9:42:57 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Borrowed from the TER thread. Take it FWIW....rmember it's written by analysts:-))))) Investment Highlights: • Applied Materials is scheduled to report third quarter (July) 2000 earnings after the close on August 9. The conference call is scheduled for 1:30pm PT, 4:30 PM ET. • We are very comfortable with our $0.68 EPS estimate versus $0.55 last quarter and $0.31 a year ago. Our estimate is in-line with consensus, with a range of $0.65 to $0.74. We believe there is a slight chance for upside. • We believe orders will be in the range of $3.2-3.3 billion level for the quarter. • We believe that Applied will reaffirm its growth prospects as capacity expansion plans are on track. The company may point to DRAM as leading the next upswing in orders. We believe growth in Taiwan will be in-line with expectations and strength is being seen in other regions. Fundamental Highlights: • Applied Materials develops, manufactures, markets and services semiconductor wafer fabrication equipment and related spare parts for the worldwide semiconductor industry. Preview of Third Quarter Earnings Applied Materials is scheduled to report third quarter (July) 2000 earnings after the close on August 9. The conference call is scheduled for 1:30pm PT, 4:30 PM ET. We expect a call that reaffirms the future positive outlook for the company. We are comfortable with our estimates. We are very comfortable with our $0.68 EPS estimate versus $0.55 last quarter and $0.31 a year ago. Our estimate is in-line with consensus, with a range of $0.65 to $0.74. We believe that there is a slight chance for upside to the estimate, given that Applied Materials is expanding capacity to meet demand. Order strength could provide some revenue upside, as some customers might have demanded fast shipments to deal with manufacturing bottlenecks. Our revenue estimate is $2.70 billion versus $2.19 billion last quarter and $1.43 billion a year ago. Overall we expect a generally positive tone to the call. We believe that Applied will reaffirm its growth prospects as capacity expansion plans are on track. The company may point to DRAM as leading the next upswing in orders. DRAM has participated at historical low levels so far in this cycle and may well be poised for a come back. We believe growth in Taiwan will be in-line with expectations and strength is being seen in other regions. Investors will focus on the continued growth in orders and visibility. We believe that investors will focus on the orders in the quarter and the outlook for orders. Company guidance was for currently for order growth in the range of 10% and a book-to-bill greater than 1.10. Thus, we had previously estimated that would put orders at the $3.2-3.3 billion level for the quarter and we remain with this estimate. We believe that customers such as Chartered Semiconductor, the new Malaysian foundries (Silterra and First Silicon), STMicroelectronics, Philips, and Japan (NEC, Toshiba, Sony) in general placed significant orders during the quarter. We believe the strength of these orders allowed Applied to leave some orders to be gathered in future quarters. Thus, we expect the company’s visibility to be for continuing improving orders in the next quarter. We suspect that guidance will be the same as the last two quarters, for single digit percentage sequential growth. Applied likely to focus on industry and company specific attributes to explain the current business strength. Although it is clear the semiconductor industry has entered the capacity expansion mode that is driving capital spending, Applied’s orders are well ahead of the industry recovery, having surpassed record levels. We expect Applied to highlight the leverage it has gained from its broad product base of technology leading products as well as the increasing emphasis customers are putting on complete solutions to explain the out performance. The company may specifically highlight strength in Deposition and 300mm, given the strong order growth reported by Novellus Systems and the looming 300mm transition. In the new product area, we suspect that Applied will focus on metrology products. Investment Opinion Maintain Accumulate/Buy Applied is executing well on delivering its broad product line and services. Customers count on Applied being a key supplier in each of its product segments, even if the customers want second sources for advanced equipment. The demand in the industry will be weighted toward foundries and logic near term with some growth in DRAM. Later in 2000 and 2001, strengthening DRAM equipment orders, 300mm, copper and other materials upgrades will start to supplement the growth in market. As this visibility increases, we expect Applied to reach a 30x P/E, in line with the company’s long term growth rate, on our CY2001 EPS estimate of $3.70. With potential upside from revenue growth and manufacturing efficiency, this could lead to a long-term price of $120. Applied Materials (AMAT) is the largest supplier of semiconductor capital equipment in the world with leadership in Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), Dry Etch, Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) Epi, Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) and Ion Implantation. AMAT has also entered factory automation software, photomask writing, wafer defect, and photomask defect inspection markets. AMAT holds roughly 30% wafer manufacturing equipment market share worldwide.

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (36368)	8/9/2000 2:48:52 PM
From: mitch-c	Respond to of 70976

Nice to see that there are still people out there who can filter the facts through all of the noise. With that thought ... this was too good to pass up. Smile when you read it. cbs.marketwatch.com excerpts: Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget provides the latest reason investors might want to temper the trust they put in technology-stock analysts. ... That said, there are times when individual investors need to think for themselves -- independent of Henry Blodget and every other guru. To that end, it's important that investors never forget three key rules about institutional analysts and the way the stock ratings game is played: Rule 1: Ratings alone mean nothing ... Rule 2: Follow the dollar ... Rule 3: Beware of price targets