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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Return to Sender who wrote (10586)	7/14/2003 9:05:31 AM
From: Return to Sender	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95487

From Briefing.com: 8:37AM Chip makers might be gearing up for semi demand -- WSJ : The Wall Street Journal article suggests customer cautiousness in ordering new equipment to expand capacity might be coming to an end soon. The article points to one piece of evidence being factories filling up with TSMC recently reporting its factories operating at 86% capacity in the second quarter, up from 67% in the first quarter. In addition, market research firm Gartner estimates plant utilization at 81% for the entire industry. However, Intel plans to spend between $3.5 bln and $3.9 bln in 2003, which is down as much as 25% from last year. The article also suggests excess optimism is possible with last year being used as an example due to TSMC and other co's placing orders in Spring 2002 only to cancel them by Semicon due chip demand being illusory. 8:37AM Broadcom introduces new Fast Ethernet switch (BRCM) 27.86: 8:25AM S&P futures vs fair value: +8.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: +18.0. : Futures trade continues to strengthen as traders have been encouraged by Merrill Lynch's upgrade of INTC to Buy from Neutral, WMT's announcement that it sees July same store sales at the high end of its up 2-4% forecast, and upgrades of large pharma companies MRK (to Sector Perform from Sector Underperform at CIBC) and JNJ (to Outperform from Peer Perform at Bear Stearns)... As such, the cash market is set to rally at the open. 7:59AM Xilinx and Altera cut to In-Line at Smith Barney on valuation : Smith Barney downgrades XLNX and ALTR to In-line from Outperform, as they do not see significant upside to either stock from current valuations. 7:47AM Motorola's mobile content download platform selected by China Unicom (MOT) 9.51: Announces that CHU has selected MOT's Java technology-based download platform to deliver mobile content to its millions of subscribers in China over its CDMA2000 1X network. 7:26AM Intel upgraded at Merrill Lynch (INTC) 23.34: Merrill Lynch upgrades to Buy from Neutral based on their belief that the street has underestimated the improvement in gross margin that INTC should realize over the coming 6-8 qtrs; firm cites better avg selling prices due to the shift towards mobile machines, less aggressive pricing in its desktop processor biz, and declining depreciation and the accelerating shift to 300mm during 2004. Target is $29. 6:41AM Semis -- Smith Barney Europe calling cyclical bottom in European Semis : As noted in the European Summary, Citigroup Smith Barney Europe is upgrading the European Semiconductor industry (to Marketweight from Underweight). On a stock specific basis, firm raising ASML to Outperform from In Line (target to Eur15 from Eur6.30), ST Micro target goes to US$22 from US$18. Maintaining Outperform rating and Eur11.5 target on Infineon. 6:34AM XLNX, ALTR cut to In-Line from Outperform at Smith Barney : 6:33AM Intel upped to Buy from Neutral at Merrill Lynch; target $29 : 6:30AM European Summary : European indexes extending gains from Friday paced by technology. STMicroelectronics (STM), ASML Holding (ASML) and Infineon (IFX) up sharply after Citigroup Inc. raised its recommendation for the semiconductor industry. The European Commission said on Monday it had extended by two weeks its review of Procter & Gamble's (PG) take over of German hair care group Wella. Swiss International Air Lines soared after a weekend media report that Germany's Lufthansa had made a firm offer for the Swiss carrier. Lufthansa denied it had made a bid... UK +0.48%, France +0.72%, Germany +1.37%. finance.yahoo.com