To: John Trader who wrote (59454 ) 1/26/2002 3:33:13 PM From: Sam Citron Respond to One of the things that caught my eye, John, is that this short call on AMAT is not just by some young hedge fund manager, but by one of the esteemed deans of value investing, John Neff, who used to run Vanguard's Windsor Fund, and who is one of the best stock pickers on the planet. The really unusual thing is that Neff almost never picks shorts. So let's take a look at what he actually told Barrons:Neff: I've got one short, Applied Materials. Like a lot of people around this table, I too think technology stocks have come back too far and too fast, particularly those areas that are capital-expenditure dependent. Applied Materials is one of the biggest semi equipment suppliers, and I think this company will earn nothing this year, as it has for the past couple of quarters. It is nicely financed, and has a very good balance sheet. But there are a lot of other tech companies in their customer base that need to get cash positive, which might happen by midyear. This company is capitalized at about $37 billion. Book value is around $9, and the stock is selling for $45.22, well down from its high of a little more than $100. But it's well up from its recent lows in the high $20s. [emphasis mine]
