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

To: Will Lyons who wrote (54114)	10/13/2001 4:58:43 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

ASYS' primary product is a horizontal diffusion furnace. They have increased their sales to the optical components industry which has compensated for a shortfall in sales to the semi industry. Advance semicondutor manufacturing has been moving to vertical diffusion furnaces. Backlog has fallen recently. BTB in the last quarter was .45. I can't be certain about ASYS's prospects, but they are a small, niche player with trailing edge technology. I would much rather bet on AMAT. For example, AMAT got into RTP (rapid thermal processing), a competitor for diffusion furnaces, and captured most of the market and generated far more revenue than ASYS dreams of. I think you need to find micros that are market leaders in a rapidly growing market. I don't like micros in a much larger market. SVGI's Thermco division made vertical diffusion furnaces and they had peak revenue of about $200M/year.