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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (29339)	12/19/2007 11:27:55 PM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78954

PLA, RICOY, SWCEY. PLA was a very controversial value pick but i have 2 other ones that have not been brought up in this board and may please other value investors as well. RICOY.OB (Ricoh). Fairly well managed (IMO) Japanese office automation company. PE around 12. P/B 1.4. They have a good growth record and i think that management is fairly shareholder value oriented 9at least for a Japanese company tse.or.jp (Type in Ricoh in the company Name field) SWCEY, SwissRe. Large swiss insurance company. Around 30B CHF market cap and they recently had to write off 1B CHF due to credit guaranty losses. Credit Guarantee is not a substantial business line for them so this was a nasty surprise. Management claims there is no other exposure. Stock trades around 70 CHF. Book is at 82CHF and earnings are estimated 11 CHF this year. Dividend yield 4%. This is a cheap financial stock with a hopefully very limited exposure to the mortgage mess. I have starter positions in both, purchased today.

To: Spekulatius who wrote (29339)	12/20/2007 1:09:54 AM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78954

Hi Spekulatius - My strategy for AMAT is to slowly build my position over the next 6 months and I wanted to start a position before year end to take advantage of any tax loss selling. With the run up in a lot of these solar development companies, there is rapid speculation and it is difficult to pick a winner especially at a value price. This is a 3-5 year play so I wanted to make sure I had at least some seed money planted in this emerging sector. As I stated in my earlier post AMAT seemed like a good value oriented play that allowed some long term participation in this sector, specifically the equipment manufacturing. I also own Corning Inc. (GLW) which is a play in Polycrystalline Silicon (polysilicon) a major material component in photovoltaic solar cells. They own a 32% interest in Hemlock Semiconductor which is a major manufacturer of polysilicon. Management recently approved a $1 billion expansion in May that will double the site's silicon output to 36,000 metric tons by 2010. dowcorning.com Currently at Hemlock Semiconductor about 60 percent of the company's silicon goes into the electronics market and 40 percent is sold to the solar panel market. The electronics market continues to grow at about 10 percent annually, but the solar panel market is growing between 35 to 40 percent per year. Spot prices for polysilicon are approaching $400 per kilogram. Hemlock will be increasing their production in early 2008 by about 4,500 metric tons (30% increase to 16,000 metric tons) and by 2010 they should be able to manufacture 32,000 metric tons. According to management, their 2008 production is already pre-sold. ======================================================== It looks like the solar business is beginning to take traction and by 2010 should be in a new long term growth market especially if oil stays above $100. Both AMAT and GLW seem like good value investments that should participate in the potential long term growth of this emerging sector. EKS