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To: James Strauss who wrote (11020)	5/14/2002 5:54:28 PM
From: Bucky Katt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13094

Jim, what do you make of the AMAT sales/earnings release? I find it troubling that the stock makes a big ah run, on making 3 cents instead of the lowered 2 cents, with a 1st-quarter net that crashed 84% on a 46% yoy sales drop.. But they say things are getting better... Well, they can hardly get much worse! Applied Materials , considered a bellwether for the semiconductor industry, late Tuesday reported net income of $52 million, or three cents a share, for the quarter ended April 28 , compared with $318.4 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. The mean estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call was for earnings of two cents a share. In the year-earlier quarter, Applied had earnings, excluding items, of $360 million, or 21 cents a share. Sales fell to $1.16 billion from $2.14 billion a year earlier. Applied, the world's largest manufacturer of equipment used to make semiconductors, said it had new orders of $1.69 billion in the second quarter, up 51% from $1.12 billion in the first quarter and up 25% from $1.35 billion in the year-earlier quarter. The company said its backlog as of April 28 was $3.11 billion, compared with $2.68 billion at the end of the first quarter. Gross margin rose to 40% from 38.5% in the first quarter, but fell short of the year-earlier's 46%. "We are seeing strong demand for our advanced products and service solutions as the semiconductor industry begins to recover and customers increase their capital spending," James C. Morgan, chairman and chief executive, said in a prepared statement. "While we believe that further improvement in world-wide economic conditions is necessary to drive the next phase of recovery for the semiconductor industry, we are encouraged by the current technology expansions." Applied posted dreary fiscal first-quarter results in February, but raised hopes that the industry had hit a bottom and could turn around in the second half of calendar 2002. The company suffered last year amid waning demand for semiconductors, which led chip makers to scale back or delay investment in new plants and equipment. Applied announced in December it would lay off 1,700 workers, its second major round of cuts in four months. The rats are still going strong, with MRI dog FONR registering a better than 50% advance to date> Message 17465465