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

To: Gottfried who wrote (40291)	9/19/2008 1:07:11 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95597

G., Didn't see the original reference to a negative backlog, but I'd speculate it's a temporal thing. i.e. in Month or Quarter "X" there was a net reduction in the backlog from the prior period. If the term applies to the absolute current level of the backlog, this would imply that not only does the company not have any sales, but it's also required to take back previously sold equipment. e.g. In Canada, for the past month, McCain's Maple Leaf Foods has probably had a negative backlog after the Listeriosis panic.

To: Gottfried who wrote (40291)	9/20/2008 1:11:46 PM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95597

Gottfried, I didn't mean to imply there was a "negative" backlog. I should have been a little more precise in my language and made sure that everyone knew I was only tabulating Backlog change, either up or down, from one month to the next. As we have mentioned from time to time, SEMI puts out data on Bookings and Billings on a monthly basis, but we will never know the initial backlog of all reporting companies when the SEMI reports began in January of 1991. Since we don't know the initial backlog(which was undoubtedly in the Billions), we can only use the Bookings and Billings figures put forth each month to tabulate a Backlog change. By the way, I noticed in your chart of AMAT you update periodically that the last Backlog reported of 4950M is higher than the previous peak Backlog of 4380M reported in 2000. Not only that, but the last 2 Backlog increases go from 3650M to 4100M(12.3%) to 4950M(20.7%). Even with all that good news, AMAT price has been in a downtrend for several weeks. One of these days, the price should start responding to the rising backlog situation.