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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (18924)	5/16/2006 11:53:07 PM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 25522

Cary, If you have any strong opinions, please share them. Ian <VBG>

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (18924)	5/17/2006 12:10:13 AM
From: etchmeister	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25522

RE: "Investors seem to be concerned about an order slow down. Five percent to 10 percent might sound good but not as good as what you just came off of. What are your thoughts on that?" According to Don CSFB just raised its EPS for AMAT a couple days ago - to me looks like "the financial community" will raise EPS but downgrade for slowing order growth but ultimately positive news fron Samsung and Toshiba should work work its way through - not sure why inventory issue now shifted towards Intel and AMD. Money is money Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. are the joint book running managers for the offering and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC is serving as a co-manager for the offering. SanDisk to sell $1B in convertible notes Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal - May 8, 2006 * Print This ArticlePrint this Article * Email this ArticleEmail this Article * ReprintsReprints * RSS FeedsRSS Feeds * RSS FeedsMost Viewed * RSS FeedsMost Emailed SanDisk Corp. said Monday it will sell $1 billion in convertible senior notes and use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures for new and existing manufacturing facilities. The money will also be used to develop new technologies and for general working capital, said the Sunnyvale-based company (NASDQ:SNDK). In order to reduce the potential dilution from conversion of the notes, the company said it intends to use a portion of the proceeds of the offering to enter into one or more hedging transactions on its common stock with the underwriters or their affiliates. Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. are the joint book running managers for the offering and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC is serving as a co-manager for the offering. SanDisk is a supplier of flash memory data storage card products, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products.

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (18924)	5/17/2006 7:51:25 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

TSMC 65-Nanometer Process Moves to Volume Production Wednesday May 17, 5:00 am ET Foundry's First Production-Ready Node Drives High Value, Low Risk and Easy Adoption SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2006--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSE:2330 - News; NYSE:TSM - News) today told a packed audience at its 2006 Technology Symposium that the company has fully qualified its 65-nanometer (nm) low power process technology. The announcement officially opens the doors for TSMC to deliver the production-ready 65nm process. With several products already ramped and delivering production volumes, the new process provides higher levels of integration and performance improvement with groundbreaking power management technology for the lowest possible power usage. The new 65nm process is supported by TSMC's Design Support Ecosystem, featuring DFM-compliant 65nm products and services; by TSMC's Reference Flow 6.0 design methodology; and by a variety of process-proven TSMC and third-party libraries and IP. "TSMC again leads the industry in pushing Moore's law to the 65 nanometer generation," said Dr. Rick Tsai, President and Chief Executive Officer, TSMC. "At 65nm geometries, we can produce highly integrated, very small and low power devices for every conceivable market. Producing on our advanced 300mm wafers, we can ramp customers' design to high volume quickly. It provides unprecedented opportunities for customers to further advance the leadership positions in their marketplaces." TSMC's 65nm Nexsys(SM) technology is the company's third-generation semiconductor process employing both copper interconnects and low-k dielectrics. It is a 9-layer metal process with core voltages of 1.0 or 1.2 volts, and I/O voltages of 1.8, 2.5 or 3.3 volts. The new technology offering supports a standard cell gate density twice that of TSMC's 90nm Nexsys(SM) process. It also features very competitive 6T SRAM and 1T embedded DRAM memory cell sizes. In addition, this technology offering includes mixed signal and radio frequency functionality to support analog and wireless design, embedded high density memory to support integration of logic and memory, and electrical fuse to support customer encryption needs. About TSMC TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology and the foundry's largest portfolio of process-proven library, IP, design tools and reference flows. The company operates two advanced twelve-inch wafer fabs, five eight-inch fabs and one six-inch wafer fab. TSMC also has substantial capacity commitments at its wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech and TSMC (Shanghai), and its joint venture fab, SSMC. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 65nm production capabilities. Its corporate headquarters are in Hsinchu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC please see tsmc.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (18924)	5/17/2006 8:02:30 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25522

07:51 AMAT Applied Materials: Color on quarter Several firms are commenting on AMAT's Q2 results: Piper Jaffray notes that AMAT reported strong F2Q06 April results with upside to revenues, bookings, and EPS, but F3Q06 July booking guidance is likely perceived as below expectation. Although AMAT reported booking results and guidance implied a booking momentum of its core semiconductor business that matches LRCX at the top range of peers, they think AMAT shares will still likely be range-bound near term, as they enter a period of slow news. Firm thinks AMAT is on the right track of transforming itself back into growth mode, however, the long-term growth story is outweighed by near-term concern of the cycle... ThinkEquity believes the lingering concern that capital equipment group is merely cyclical should fade as AMAT pierces through the previous peak, achieved in Oct. 2004, over the next few quarters. They say the moderating growth in quarterly bookings should allow for a longer-lasting upturn... Credit Suisse believes the Street is more likely to focus on the negatives from the call, which were: 1) mid-point of July order guidance of 7.5% QoQ is below LRCX/KLAC at 10%; 2) no commentatry on October, leaving open the possibility of down orders in Oct - disappointing relative to expectations going into the call; 3) 200mm upside will not recur and 4) perpetual paranoia of an order peak - from July to October now for AMAT... Stifel says that while they still believe that industrywide semi equipment orders could peak in the June or September quarter, they believe AMAT's outperformance will be driven by its increasingly diversified business model. Firm raises their estimates following the call and maintains a Buy, as they continue to believe that the stock is only being valued for its semi cap business... Susquehanna expects limited near-term pressure on AMAT due to signs that order acceleration have peaked. . . . . . . . . . . . ...................and here I thought they had a good quarter!

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (18924)	5/17/2006 9:53:06 AM
From: niek	Respond to of 25522

Tool Order: Applied Materials receives six orders above $100 million in quarter Wednesday, 17 May 2006 FabTech Applied Materials beat its own and analysts projections for its 2Q06 financial quarter that saw the semiconductor equipment giant receive six individual orders from chip manufacturers that were in excess of $100 million US dollars. The company also received seven orders that where between $50 and $100 million, and 14 orders that were between $10 and $50 million. New orders of $2.49 billion for 2Q06 increased 22 percent from $2.04 billion from 1Q06, and increased 60 percent from $1.55 billion for 2Q05. 300mm tool sales made up 73 percent of sales in the quarter with 74 percent of these for applications at or below the 100nm node. With sales of $2.25 billion the major orders came from memory manufacturers in both Korea and Taiwan, according to Nancy Handel, Applied Materials CFO during a conference call with financial analysts. Handel noted that orders for DRAM production topped the application break-out, making up 27 percent of sales in the quarter and up 80 percent from the last quarter! However, Mike Splinter president and chief executive officer of Applied Materials pointed out that NAND Flash had become the key technology driver and accounted for some significant new orders for its etch and CVD platforms. He believed the company was gaining market share in the memory sector. He was also bullish on next quarters figures of up 5 to 10 percent and believed the industry would continue to increase capital spending throughout 2007 as capacity utilization remained high across both 200mm and 300mm fabs. This was being driven by demand for consumer driven electronic products, which remained strong. He estimated that CapEx could be up a further 10 percent in 2007. Splinter also noted that order intakes from major foundries had yet to really boost financial figures but the next quarter would see spending increase from this sector. Overall spending he believed had yet to get "crazy" and was still "rational."