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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (3026)	10/24/1997 10:18:00 PM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10921

Cary: While I understand and respect your opinion relative to AMAT guidance in the Nov. conference call and I agree with you insofar as it will provide an excellent glimpse of the market *at that time*, one can gauge the semi equipment market at any time prior to the AMAT conference call by calling AMAT or other companies over the month to see if anything has changed. You can bet the analysts will. In any event, here is the situation according to Bagely: Bagley's View -- Some quotes from the Lam conference call with particular relevance to current issues: "Concern has also been raised with regard to currency difficulties in Asia. Since most of the output in wafer fabs are sold in dollars, the ability to invest in added capacity should be be largely unimpaired. My concern is more focused on the reduction in dollar based discretionary spending on the part of consumers in Asia. Growth in consumer spending in Asia has been one of the drivers for increased semiconductor consumption by PCs and consumer electronic devices. I would me more comfortable if DRAM prices and currencies in Asia would strengthen. Even with these difficulties. I am positive about the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment industries. These difficulties call for prudence and not panic. ... Our product mix is heavily biased toward .25 micron systems. When I look at what the DRAM producers are doing (Roger and I just got back from a tour of major customers in Japan) it is pretty clear that everyone is focused on shrinking the die size on 16 mb production and moving as quickly concurrently to 64 mb production because the bit price continues to come down.The only way you are going to get more revenue is that you either have to build another fab and process more wafers or you have to get more bits off of each wafer you are currently producing, which is what everyone is attempting to do. So in essence they are pulling the techology forward. If you have two companies sitting side by side and one is on .25 micron, 16 mb and one is on .35 micron, 16 mb, the .35 guy is non-competitive. So if you two facilities running within your company, one on .35 and one on .25, in the current market -- at the current pricing -- the .35 -- I don't believe can make money compared to the .25 micron. So if your capacity ages at .35 or .50 micron and you are competing with people who are on .25 micron and maybe, in the very near future, as small as .20, they are going to get alot more die per wafer, regardless of whether they are building 64 or 16 mbs, and they are going to be able to price you out of profitability. So if all of your capacity that is on larger feature size -- I don't think it is cost effective and it is, in essence, obsoleted for memory capacity. They may look around for something else to do with it, but it is not going to serve the memory market at all. That's my view."

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (3026)	10/24/1997 10:24:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10921

Cary, Outstanding post, and back on topic. Congratulations. What, no CYMI entry price yet? ;-) Seriously, in your opinion, how probable is it that the prices for EGLS, LRCX, SVGI or AMAT will be seen before / after the AMAT call? Asked another way, how probable is it that the SE Asia collapse scenarios will continue to dominate the market's thinking? How likely do you think it is that AMAT will offer a negative outlook 3 weeks after CYMI, LRCX, etc have provided positive outlooks? In advance, thanks for any speculations. Ian.

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (3026)	10/24/1997 11:06:00 PM
From: nycnpbbkr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Came over here checking out Ian (you know Sun Tzu stuff). Read your posts and like em, again. I usually work in a market of stocks but it looks like we may have a stock market problem. Thats fine but any thought as to when the markets low will occur? Should we expect the techs to make their lows this quarter, next or a year from now? Thank you Ken