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

To: Return to Sender who wrote (53169)	8/10/2011 12:56:27 PM
From: brokenst0nes	1 Recommendation Respond to of 95616

Don't believe its up on the upgrade, more that performance has bottomed out, for time being at least. Margins are down a lot from a year ago, 45% or so to 38-9% now, they're in the process of switching their wafers over to 6in, but that will take the next year and margins won't improve until 2nd half of their just started FY. They have a power semi business dependant on the solar inverter market, which like rest of solar market isn't performing, business is forecast to be weak. They are looking at expanding into other application areas, again 2H.

To: Return to Sender who wrote (53169)	8/10/2011 1:22:49 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95616

re CREE: LT, I prefer the LED equips, who have a defensible moat. CREE, I believe, sells a commodity with low barriers to entry. The Chinese are targeting the LED market; they have shown a willingness, in a list of industries, to chase market share to the point of nil profits (like they are doing in solar currently), and I think they will do this in lighting as well. CREE is a short, on any strength. AIXG and VECO are on my buy-list, for the day after QE3 is announced.

To: Return to Sender who wrote (53169)	8/10/2011 2:40:43 PM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95616

I don't follow CREE closely, but I do look at it every week and update the data since CREE is a member of the SOXM. For a long, long time CREE has had a highly elevated level of growth estimate(22 - 27 analysts) compared to the rest of the stocks in the SOXM. The next highest growth estimate in the SOXM is STM at 17. In their quarterly report they only beat consensus earnings of 0.27 by a penny. Operating margins fell to 13.5 percent, less than half the 29.6 percent it recorded a year earlier. Etc, Etc. However, having come up with a report that would have sent most stocks down many percent, CREE is presently up over 21 percent from yesterday's close. From the upgrade report of Canaccord Genuity, this is probably the reason: <<Cantor Fitzgerald said Cree's margins likely troughed last quarter and recommended investors "aggressively accumulate shares at the current depressed valuation to take advantage of a multi-year secular growth trend in solid state lighting.">> The market obviously believes the outlook for growth in this stock.