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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (8511)	11/6/1997 12:43:00 PM
From: Steven Angelil	Respond to of 25960

Justa and All, I am not going to bother to post, but I KNOW that the statement made by Akins was for 15% sequential revenue growth for AT LEAST(my emphasis) the next 2 quarters. Steve

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (8511)	11/6/1997 12:50:00 PM
From: Gerald L. Kerr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

Re Growth: Here is what's in the quarterly report. >>On a sequential basis, third quarter revenue increased 15 percent compared with revenues of $50,132,000 in the second quarter of 1997. Third quarter operating income increased 21 percent compared with operating income of $7,970,000 in the second quarter.<< >>''Based on our Sept. 30, 1997 backlog and significant orders received since the close of the third quarter, and on customer forecasts, we currently expect continued sequential revenue growth for at least the next two quarters,'' said Robert Akins, president and chief executive.<< biz.yahoo.com I don't think Akins or anyone gave firm numbers for the expected growth for the next two quarters. Gerry

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (8511)	11/6/1997 2:35:00 PM
From: Yakov Lurye	Respond to of 25960

Justa, Somebody had probably answered your question, but just to reiterate: These are excerpts from the CC in October 97. For the full text see Scott McI posts: techstocks.com techstocks.com 1) .. I want to ..remind everyone that one of our customers recently told us that, in their opinion, the demand by chipmakers for Deep-UV tools in 1998 would be approximately 700 systems, and in the same breath said he doubted that the industry would have an industry-wide capacity to meet all of those requests 2) In the third quarter, we revenued 126 lasers ..On the backlog picture, our backlog at the end of the third quarter was 116.3 million dollars. .six month book-to-bill for Q3:1.25. .we believe that the six month book-to-bill is perhaps the most appropriate measure of book-to-bill given the concentration of Cymer's business into a very small number of customers, and the synchronization - or lack thereof - of their orders with respect to the closing of a quarter. .. based on significant orders received since the close of the third quarter, and on customer forecasts, we expect continued sequential growth for at least the next two quarters. As we discussed in the past that we would like to manage our customers to six months of high visibility purchase orders if possible, with another six months of forecast. within that time frame we feel comfortable with revenue growth increasing for at least the next two quarters. 3)..as of the end of the third quarter, approximately 160 of our lasers have been delivered for systems that are bound for production. << Hodess: So a little over half of the shipments thus far since last Fall when you started to ramp-up? >> I think it's probably less than a half. But the number is certainly growing. <Deanha> what kind of lead times you're seeing now in general going into steppers and scanners and what kind of rate of decline you see in that over the next three or four quarters. <Akins:> Jay, I think it characterized the integration times pretty exactly when we said it took about six months to get a laser into a stepper at one of our direct customers prior to delivery. I don't have exact figures in my head right now, but I would say that the integration times, depending upon the customers, are probably in the four to five month range right now for the standard stepper design. For the more sophisticated and newer stepper models, that's probably closer to five or six months. And scanners of course are a brand-new tool, and a number of additional more-demanding challenges optically for the laser on the stepper itself, are probably in the six month area themselves. Going forward we see that the last generation stepper will probably become faster, coming down to may only a quarter or so of integration time. But at the same time we'll have a mix with that with the more sophisticated tools that will take longer integration. It's difficult for us to come to an exact forecast right now of what the integration time will be. But certainly it's safe to assume that the integration of lasers into steppers will be significantly faster that those into scanners. <Deanha:> Ok, and if you were going to characterize a ratio of lasers to steppers for 1998, would you be using something in the one point five area or would you be using something smaller than that? I was just kind of trying to calculate the size of the laser market next year given the assumption that the Deep-UV market would be kind of in line with Dataquest numbers which I guess are what, around the 500 level or something like that? Angus: Uh, yeah. . obviously it's going to be greater than the number of steppers and scanners delivered. obviously it's between one and one point five, exactly where we can't estimate right now. 3) . We are expecting once we get out of this year, in particular, and start getting into next year, we are looking for a gradual steady improvement in gross margins, as we can start to become much more efficient in our manufacturing operations. I still don't want, uh, I'm a little hesitant in characterizing fourth quarter at this point because I'm sure there's still some cleanup from the move and everything else of getting settled in the new facility that could potentially still impact us here in the fourth quarter. But definitely during 1998 we're expecting steady improvement there towards our targets. MY immediate impression is as follows: 1) THEY DO NOT WANT TO SPECULATE BEYOND 6 MONTHS, but within the next two quarters they expect to ship about 300 lasers (1261.22 assuming even further reduction in book to bill) 2) 1998 numbers for lasers will roughly approximate 3Q1998 -2Q1999 numbers for systems in which lasers are used, so it is not unreasonable to expect 700 lasers for 1998; 3) Of 350 lasers they'd shipped so far, 160 are already in production, with the expected speed-up in stepper /scanner deliveries, their customers should not experience serious laser inventory build-up. 4) their gross margins will increase above the current levels, but their tax rates will grow up as well - from 25% to 37% 5) they may get some revenue from customer support . May take time to do a more detailed study case, also need information about stepper shipments forecasts. Actually, Deanha did a reasonable job for a worst-case scenario, and even his numbers seem quite attractive to me.