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

To: Gottfried who wrote (42366)	2/20/2001 12:30:20 AM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Gottfried, I agree! - the btb will be down and nearly everyone, at this point, believes it will be - no surprise. However, the question is - how long before the next upturn. The following article shows the dichotomy in present thinking - very hard to get agreement on a time frame for improvement. siliconstrategies.com Would you believe a big upswing in capital spending in 2nd half? Now this prediction is what I'd file under wild-eyed optimism. After surveying the major IC producers, Lehman Brothers concludes that many of them will increase their capital spending plans in the second half. Why? By then, the brokerage firm expects the chip industry to be pulling out of its current slump. So far this year, the world's top 20 chip makers have lowered their capital spending plans by 10% from their earlier estimates, Lehman Brothers figures. But its analysts now believe these plans will change once again. "We expect budgets to be revised upwards through 2001 as a result of a rebound in global electronics demand in the second half '01," they say. The way it stands right now, the chip industry plans to reduce capital spending this year by 1% from last year's $55.5 billion. They originally had expected to spend 10% more this year. Lehman Brothers has cut its own forecast by a quarter, but is still wildly optimistic. The brokerage still looks for 15% growth because of the second-half recovery that it sees in chip sales. There has been a slew of cutbacks in recent days in capital spending plans. This includes a $1.1 billion cut by TSMC and what observers estimate is a 45% cut by Motorola to $800-to-900 million. But two vendors are going counter to the industry. Intel shocked everyone in January by kicking up spending 15% to a record $7.5 billion, and Samsung Electronic jumped its plans by 18% to $5.5 billion. But watch out! Maybe we shouldn't be paying all that much attention to the semiconductor industry's capital spending plans. Chip makers seem to change their minds at the drop of a hat, so the numbers really aren't all that good for making forecasts.