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To: Big Dog who wrote (66)	8/15/2000 6:30:08 PM
From: Big Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 195

Semiconductor capital expenditures shift a bit in current boom cycle By Jack Robertson Electronic Buyers' News (08/15/00, 05:02:51 PM EDT) MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Semiconductor capital spending patterns are running at a difference pace in the current boom cycle compared to the last one in the 1993-1995 period, according to analyst Jay Deahna of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter here. The semiconductor equipment analyst said capital spending in the chip industry ran at 23% of total revenues in 1999 and it will be at 26.3% in 2000--higher than it was in the first two years of the last up-cycle (in 1993 and 1994). However, Deahna predicted that semiconductor capital spending will level off at 26.6% of industry revenues vs. 27.8% in 1995--the last year of the last boom cycle. Deahna said the biggest change in the semiconductor capital expenditures is a shift away from building new capacity for PC-related chips. "In the current cycle, the PC food chain represents about 35% of global semiconductor capital spending," said the Morgan Stanley vice president. "In the 1993-95 cycle, about 65% of semiconductor capital spending was focused on the PC food chain." Agreeing with Deahna's assessment of what's driving capital spending is David N.K. Wang, senior vice president at Applied Materials Inc. Last week, Wang told financial analysts that investments in DRAM plants were running at a lower rate than in 1995, partly because Internet applications are more logic intensive than PCs. Wireless systems--such as cell phones--are also driving up the volumes for system-on-chip, analog, and flash memories. In 1995, about 50% of Applied Materials' fab equipment bookings were for DRAM plants, said Wang, who is a member of the company's Office of the President. "Today, the average is 20-25% [of fab equipment bookings in the industry]," he said. Only 15% of Applied's bookings for new fab tools were going to DRAM plants in the last fiscal quarter, which ended July 30. Morgan Stanley's Deahna said another important difference in the current semiconductor capital spending cycle is the ratio of expenditures on backend assembly and test equipment, which is now double that of the 1993-95 cycle. "Backend capex is approximately 4% of revenue in 2000, compared to 2% in 1994," he noted. Some of the increase in investments in backend assembly and test is a result of more complex IC packaging technologies, which are needed to handle system-on-chip designs with large amounts of I/O. Chip speeds and mixed-signal ICs are also driving up tester costs, according to industry experts. --Additional reporting by J. Robert Lineback of SBN