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

To: advocatedevil who wrote (60671)	2/16/2002 9:02:58 PM
From: advocatedevil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

"Semiconductor Alert! (Feb. 11-15) - Commentary & analysis of week's chip news" By Robert Henkel Semiconductor Business News (02/15/02 18:47 p.m. EST) siliconstrategies.com This is another long article which includes various sub-topics. Here's a snip about AMAT: __________________________________________________ “Applied says chip gear market coming back--but very slowly” Applied Materials, the global equipment giant, was talking a bit more positively this week. This year is still going to be a bad one for the chip production equipment business, but Applied believes that the industry may be on its way back up--albeit slowly. "We are somewhat encouraged by orders for the new technologies," says CEO James C. Morgan. New orders totaled $1.12 billion in the quarter ended Jan. 27th, a slight increase over the $1.1 billion reported in the previous quarter. But these orders were still off 54% from the $2.43 billion in the year-ago quarter. Sales are still falling--that's no surprise. Applied showed a 21% sequential drop to $1 billion in the quarter, and a 58% fall from the $2.36 billion reported in the year-ago three months. The world's largest supplier of semiconductor equipment did manage to beat Wall Street estimates of on-going earnings, staying slightly profitable with a profit of $15 million instead of a predicted slight loss. But the company ended up with a quarterly net loss of $45 million after including a charge for eliminating 1,700 jobs and for acquiring in-process R&D. Orders will increase sequentially by 10-to-15% and revenues will be flat in the current quarter ending in April, Applied predicts, but says it will take another quarter or two before it is clear that a sustained recovery is underway in the end markets for chips. Global semiconductor capital spending will fall by 25% this year, Applied predicts, but will increase dramatically for the latest generation of equipment. Leading edge processes are now running at 95% of capacity or more--or essentially sold out. As a result, $10 billion will be spend on 300-mm wafer fab equipment in 2002, predicts CFO Joseph Bronson, up two-thirds from the $6 billion spent on 300-mm systems last year. But it's going to be a while before Applied revenues get back up to the $3 billion range per quarter as they were before the current downturn. That won't happen until capacity "buys" start up again. As a rule of thumb, these tool purchases for volume production require a fab utilization rate of at least 80%, and the global industry is running now at only about 60%. __________________________________________________ AdvocateDevil