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

To: Return to Sender who wrote (28625)	2/16/2006 12:56:07 PM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 95645

Well, there is nothing like good news to inspire "selling". <<20.97: Applied Materials not only beat first quarter earnings projections on greater than 20% order growth, but guided up second quarter projections as well, indicating greater cycle strength. It now sees orders up 15-20%, an increase from its previous estimate of 7-10%. Revenues are expected to rise 13-15% sequentially with earnings in a range of 22-23 cents per share. Pro forma earnings for Q1 were 19 cents per share - two cents ahead of expectations with revenues also coming in ahead, up 4.3% year/year to $1.86 bln. The Santa Clara-based company enjoyed broad-based strength by product and by geographical region for high volume production and leading edge 65nm and 45nm chip development programs. Applied Materials' earnings and guidance continues to support our positive stance on the semiconductor capital equipment industry in 2006. The stock has lagged its global peers, but we would expect this variance to narrow. Supportive factors for solid a spending cycle include rising capex plans by top five global buyers, including IDMs, and what we view as good barometers for the entire industry, the Taiwanese foundries. Both United Microelectronics (UMC) and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) reported record revenues and higher utilization rates in the fourth quarter. We expect these companies will increase capex in the first half of the year due to tight utilization of advanced process technologies.>> As I sit here looking at the semi-equips today, some of the big names are: AMAT -2.4% KLAC -1.2% LRCX -2.6% NVLS -2.6% TER -1.0% Don