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

To: Curlton Latts who wrote (8714)	11/7/1997 5:24:00 PM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

All: AMAT market view in interview of Morgan confirms the big move to .25 micron. (What's new). Important preview of AMAT conference call during third week of November which will be listened to by the big institutions to gauge 1998: CNBC - THE MONEY WHEEL APPLIED MATERIALS CEO JAMES MORGAN NOVEMBER 5, 1997 Bruce: The semiconductor equipment stocks had been among the most volatile of the tech sector recently, with Applied Materials typically charting among the most active stocks on the Nasdaq. Applied Materials makes equipment for five of the six major processes of chip manufacturing, and has more than 50% of its 1996 sales coming from Asia. Add that to the parade of new technologies that chip makers have to adjust to, you have a challenging year ahead for James Morgan, CEO of Applied Materials, who is joining us from our New York bureau. Thanks for being here. Good morning. Bruce: How is business? Business has been fine. As you know, we're really in the right business at the right time with the right capability and seem to be gaining share in most of our product areas and there's a major shift on the part of the worldwide semiconductor industry of course, to move from .5 and .35, down to .25 and .18 technology, so there's an investment program that is expected to extend over several years. Bruce: Mr. Morgan, a lot of stock traders had been very concerned about your exposure to Asia. As we noted your '96 revenues had more than 50 coming from that region. How are you going to navigate that? Well I think you have to remember that the semiconductor industry is a global industry so the -- our customers in Asia are really building chips for the worldwide marketplace, and so places like Taiwan and Singapore clearly have demand on their products, and are buying equipment to move their technologies to the next generation, because they want to lead that technology move. Bruce: Do you expect your Asian customers to reduce orders which I assume are denominated in dollars because of technology-rather than currencies challenges? I wouldn't think so, because don't forget this their costs, so they're a more competitive supplier with the lower currencies Bruce: Would you say, then, there's a neutral impact? Or how would you quantify that? Well, we look at the market really customer by customer around the world, and site by site. Our forecasts are based on that, not necessarily by any particular one currency activity. So what we see is they're planning to move their technologies down strategically, and we fortunately have a whole family of new products we've introduced. Bruce: No impact from currencies for you? It will be more of an impact on the general economies, I think, than individual companies. Bruce: What's the net/net? Our outlook has been what we said last year, or in the last quarter, was that our outlook for '98 is stronger than '97. Bruce: Let's take a look at how volatile the stock trading has been in the past year, particularly the sharp break that Applied Materials took recently. As we see, AMAT, now the symbol, trading up one at 383/8. Is that a more rational level for AMAT to be trading at, rather than the much higher 55- plus zone that you were earlier on? I think the real question is, what is one of the great global -- potentially one of the great global companies worth a few years from now? And I think fortunately we're, as I said earlier, we are in the right business, we're part of the information age. Most everything that happens around the world technologically depends on our capabilities, so we think we have a large opportunity. Bruce: Are you, you also have another opportunity I will have to ask quickly, are you folks buying your own shares at these sharply reduced prices? We tend -- we've been growing so rapidly, we've had a compounded growth rate of close to 30% for the last 20 years. We tend to use our capital primarily to expand and support our rapid growth, although we have had kind of a continuing buyback program. nasdaq!

To: Curlton Latts who wrote (8714)	11/7/1997 5:35:00 PM
From: JRGEE	Respond to of 25960

Curly, thank you for keeping us focus. as warren buffett said, if you are not ready to invest your money for ten years do not invest it for ten minutes. i for one am not going anywhere. i will own cymer until the management leaves or the market changes. i see cymer's management thinking of ways to expand there product lines down the road. it does s--ks that this company can not sale its self better to the investment community. hell, mike dell is the best cheerleader for their company than any pr firm.