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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Autumn Henry who wrote (1459)	11/9/1997 7:05:00 PM
From: LK2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

APM problems. Most of what APM is currently making is thin film. WDC just announced on Friday they would be ending their thin film program early. WDC is one of APM's biggest customers. APM just recently started shipping MR products, and MR products currently represent a very small portion of what they make. Until a few weeks ago or so, the 'official position' at APM was that the thin film product would be made for one more year. ---------- You need to check or verify anything I say, for accuracy. ---------- But basically, APM is ****ed as far as forward earnings are concerned. They will have a massive problem selling the product they can make (thin film---who will buy it from them?). They can't yet make the product that customers want to buy now. APM doesn't have the knowledge or experience or manufacturing facilities to make MR products to replace the thin film products they can make. APM is making and shipping some MR product, but that is a small part of their product mix. They were planning (and hoping) to transition gradually to MR, and now the transition is going to be a lot faster than they were expecting. What the stock price will do in the future is a guess. What APM reports for revenues and earnings for the next 3 to 4 quarters is also a guess. But if you guess that the next year's earnings are going to be a deficit or loss, you are probably going to be right. And you have no way of knowing when APM will make a profit, or if they will ever make a profit. The transition to MR is not easy. And when tech stocks stumble, they can recover, they can spend years in the dumps, or they can go under. If you've been paying any attention to the Silicon Investor threads on APM, you will have seen that, until recently, posters were talking to Mr. Crisman, the President/CEO of APM, and posting very positive views on APM's outlook. That was until APM reported the Sep 97 Quarter. Almost anybody that bought APM within the last few months has lost money on the stock. And almost none of the posters on the APM threads would now believe the words that Crisman speaks if they now spoke to him on the telephone. The problem-and the anger-is due to the fact that the stock price dropped while Crisman was making positive statements to the posters. And the negative statements (the actual Sep quarter earnings report, and the negative, reduced earnings outlook for the next two years that Salomon Bros reported after being supposedly guided by APM) came out after the stock price had dropped. --------- But now the Salomon Bros report is old news, and for a current EPS estimate for APM, you would need to see a new, revised estimate. Any estimate that was prepared two or three weeks ago is basically worthless now, based on WDC's action to end their thin film program early. -Larry