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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rustam Tahir who wrote (25190)	10/14/2000 10:40:44 AM
From: WTSherman	Respond to of 25960

<Crappy stock performance does mean that management has screwed up in some way.< Let me get this... Management screwed up because they sold too many laser to their customers? Because they throttled the only major competitor on the scene through close relationships with other Japanese company's? That they didn't correctly forecast how bad the semi-equip biz would get? They they didn't aggressively inflate expectations when times got good? Having run a large US sub of a Japanese company I can tell you that I am VERY impressed that CYMI managed to keep Canon and Nikon from getting into bed with Komatsu. It would have been so natural and such a typical Japanese thign to do that its actually impressive that they managed to keep it from happening. That CYMI should have somehow convinced C and N that they weren't going to be as successful in the stepper business as quickly as they thought is just silly. CYMI was a TINY company compared to those two. Again, if you understand the Japanese you would know that once they make their plans they go ahead and execute on them. Change is anethma to them. CYMI's advice would hardly have changed their expectations. Given Komatsu's attempt to weasle into the biz their strategy was sound, except for the fact that the whole semi-equip biz would go into the deep freeze for two years. Which brings us down to the issue of forecasting. CYMI was very bad at that during the big downturn. Gee, what a shock. A small company going through its first major business cycle is naive about how solid the forecasts their customers are giving them? How unusual! You might want to go back and review some of the statements that came out of other, much larger and more experienced, semi-equip players at the same time. My recollection is that they were very similar. Lastly, you seem to imply that mgmt had an obligation to pump the stock so that investors could get the maximum near term gain and sell out. This is not a responsibility of management. Supporting the stock price with PR is important, pushing the envelope to maximize the "high" of the stock is not. All of this makes me sound like a management apologist and I don't particularly like that, especially since I have a problem with the self-centered nature of most corporate management today and their lack of concern for investors. However, I don't see that kind of indifference in CYMI's management. Have they failed to anticipate things correctly, all the time? Absolutely! I'm not shocked that this is the case, given the size of the company and its development stage. Sometimes investors and analysts have inflated expectations for a business that don't end up being reality. Forecasting how large an industry or industry segment will be 5 years down the road is nothing more than an educated guess in virtually any business.

To: Rustam Tahir who wrote (25190)	10/14/2000 10:53:17 AM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

Rustam, actually, they could invest some $10 MM to $15 MM in a small company in Florida (Gate Technologies, Inc.). They own the exclusive rights to Patent #6,043,294, which should form the basis to novel laser assisted chemical processing. Once developed, oodles of lasers could be sold into that market. Zeev irrevolute.iuma.com