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

To: Gottfried who wrote (13125)	1/26/2004 10:43:59 PM
From: Return to Sender	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95738

If semi equipment stock prices were also at 9 year lows, along with billings, do you think maybe Briefing.com would be singing a different story? Yes billings are going to rise. How much? How soon? For how long? So are these stocks undervalued, overvalued or fairly valued? RtS

To: Gottfried who wrote (13125)	1/27/2004 12:12:06 AM
From: Return to Sender	Respond to of 95738

TSMC, UMC Q4 profits seen back at boom-time levels Monday January 26, 11:21 pm ET By Michael Kramer biz.yahoo.com TAIPEI, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The world's top two contract microchip makers, TSMC (Taiwan:2330.TW - News) and UMC (Taiwan:2303.TW - News), are set to post their best quarterly profits since the industry's last boom in 2000, driven by demand for gadgets such as mobile phones. Analysts estimate Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) (NYSE:TSM - News) and United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) (NYSE:UMC - News) will report net profits for October-December six times greater than a year earlier, when the chip sector was deep in a slump. That still leaves plenty of room for further growth in 2004, as the rebound in semiconductor demand shows signs of spreading to long-dormant areas, such as corporate information technology and new telecom networks, analysts said. "The fourth quarter was strong from the standpoint that TSMC had excellent broadening of end-demand," said Merrill Lynch analyst Dan Heyler, citing chips for mobile phones, integrated circuits used in telecoms applications and digital consumer products. While demand for chips used in personal computers was weaker, Heyler said corporations would probably get around to upgrading hardware in the second half of the year, after first spending newly increased IT budgets on software. TSMC is expected to post a T$15.99 billion ($475 million) net profit, surging 526 percent from the same quarter last year and up 5.42 percent from the July-September period, according to Reuters Research. Earnings per share of T$0.79 are expected. Fourth-quarter net profit for UMC was estimated at T$5.94 billion, vaulting 502 percent from a year earlier and 41 percent from the previous quarter to reach earnings per share of T$0.34. Both gains come off a lacklustre fourth quarter in 2002, when customers trimmed orders due to bulging inventories. STRONG Q4 SALES Since a trough in late April, shares of TSMC have surged 63 percent and those of UMC 66 percent, helping Taiwan's main index (Taiwan:^TWII - News) to jump 51 percent over the same period. TSMC, which is one-fifth owned by Philips Electronics NV (Amsterdam:PHG.AS - News), is set to announce fourth-quarter results on January 29, while UMC is scheduled to follow on February 4. The results for both firms would be the best since 2000, the previous peak for this highly cyclical industry, which tumbled into its worst revenue downturn on record in 2001. Revenues mostly scraped bottom in 2002 before a recovery gained traction last year. Indeed, TSMC has already announced fourth-quarter revenues had risen 40 percent from the same period in 2002 to a record high of T$57.8 billion, while UMC posted a 35.3 percent rise to its best revenues since a record high in the last quarter of 2000. Analysts' estimates show that UMC's profitability soared in the fourth quarter after largely trailing TSMC throughout most of last year as slower progress in reducing the size of circuits cost it some lucrative orders. UMC is now making more advanced chips with circuits 0.13 microns wide, the same level of technology as Intel Corp's (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) Pentium chips. "They have resolved most of the problems they previously had with 0.13 microns, and they are making a lot of new products," said ING Financial Markets analyst Chris Hsieh. "Whether they will catch TSMC in this up-cycle -- there is still some likelihood." Both companies are also expected to announce their capital expenditure budgets for 2004, a figure that can move share prices of chip manufacturing gear makers such as ASML (Amsterdam:ASML.AS - News) and Applied Materials (NasdaqNM:AMAT - News). The Taiwan firms are among their largest customers. Most analysts expect TSMC to hike its 2004 capex budget to US$2 billion after hinting at a "large-scale" increase over US$1.2 billion spent in 2003. UMC is forecast to hike capital spending to about US$820 million from US$500 million last year. ($1=T$33.