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

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (39659)	11/15/2000 9:39:49 AM
From: herenow_2	Respond to of 70976

Briefing.Com on AMAT earnings forecasts: Applied Materials (AMAT) 41 7/16: After the close today, chip equipment maker and industry leader, Applied Materials, will report its fiscal Q4 results. Needless to say, the market is not expecting to be blown away by what AMAT has to say. The proof of that statement is in AMAT's stock as it has faced some pretty relentless selling pressure since the start of September, losing 52% of its value. Aside from the general market conditions, that sell-off has been driven by concerns chip makers will be reducing their capital spending plans over the next several quarters as DRAM prices decline and as they experience lower end market demand in key areas such as PCs and cell phones. Those concerns have been fed by a number of brokerage firms that have either cut earnings estimates and/or downgraded AMAT in recent weeks. Prudential and FS Van Kasper downgraded the stock yesterday, but altogether, there have been 8 separate downgrades of AMAT since September 22. Frankly, the expectations heading into today's report are pretty low which, in an ironic sense, can be a good thing, especially if AMAT can provide some reassuring guidance on its conference call. Having said that, the consensus view seems to be that AMAT will be cautious with its outlook, most likely projecting relatively flat sequential guidance for revenues and flat to up bookings at best. As for Q4, AMAT set the bar for itself with its guidance on the Q3 earnings conference call. For the quarter ending October, AMAT said that it expected earnings to be between $0.73 and $0.75 per share; revenues between $2.85B and $2.90B; and orders exceeding $3.5B. Strikingly, a number of analysts have set their Q4 EPS and sales targets above AMAT's own guidance. The First Call consensus EPS estimate is $0.76.-- Patrick J. O'Hare, Briefing.com Firm Q4 EPS Q4 Revs Q4 Bookings Lehman Bros. $0.77 $2.95B $3.55B CS First Boston $0.77 $2.99B $3.55B CIBC Oppenheimer $0.76 -- $3.6B+ Prudential $0.74 $2.85B-$2.90B $3.5B-$3.6B FS Van Kasper $0.76 $2.925B -- UBS Warburg $0.76 $2.98B $3.5B 09:20 ET ******