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Technology Stocks : Kulicke and Soffa -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HoodBuilder who wrote (2224)	12/1/1997 7:32:00 PM
From: the Druid	Respond to of 5482

The problem with Taiwan now is mostly political. It is not in currency trouble as other SEA economies. Their commitment to high tech semi fab is still on track and as soon as the political side stablises the economy will be in order again. South Korea's future is not so rosy IMO. For Japan, more banking trouble is possibly ahead and there lies the big fear factor for semis (AMAT etc).

To: HoodBuilder who wrote (2224)	12/1/1997 7:33:00 PM
From: tony pan	Respond to of 5482

"If Taiwan doesn't take them others are waiting in line" Who are others? Can not be South Korea? I just hope KLIC would not go down like AMAT because it sells back end equipments.

To: HoodBuilder who wrote (2224)	12/1/1997 7:40:00 PM
From: IMW	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5482

KLIC and AMAT are presenting at SEMICON, Wed. Dec. 3 in Japan. News release on Business Wire mentions that this is an opportunity for the international business community to meet senior executives and engineers and see demonstrations of the latest semi tech.

To: HoodBuilder who wrote (2224)	12/2/1997 1:26:00 PM
From: Donald L. Dominicci	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5482

Mike Are you talking 1300 in Q2??? That is a 30% move above the last qtr. The following was posted in INFRASTRUCTURE on one of KLIC's competitors On Nov. 21, we saw news that the ESEC Group, a manufacturer of automatic assembly equipment, reported both record sales and earnings for the first six months of the company's fiscal year, March 1 through Aug. 31. Being a Swiss company, ESEC reports six-monthly vs. quarterly as we do in the US. ESEC reported sales of CHF 217 million ($155 million US dollars, at an exchange rate of 1.4 Swiss francs per dollar) versus sales of CHF 136 million (US $97.1 million) the previous year, an increase of 60%. At CHF 13 million (US $9.3 million), profits are already higher than reported by the company for the entire previous fiscal year. ESEC noted that order commitments are running ahead of the company's forecasts, and coupled with the upswing in the semiconductor equipment market, is predicting that it will achieve its objectives for the year of CHF 480 million in sales (US $343 million) and profits of CHF 40-50 million (US $29 to $36 million). ESEC is a stiff competitor to US public company Kulicke and Soffa Industries (KLIC). Clearly, both companies are enjoying a very strong and healthy demand for semiconductor assembly equipment. Both companies are developing leading edge equipment and are getting into the potentially explosive back-end automation arena. From a European investment perspective, ESEC is one of the few interesting plays in the semiconductor equipment market. From a US investment viewpoint, the strong ESEC results underscore the re-bound opportunities which we have discussed for KLIC in the coming two quarters. Neither company seems to be feeling the Asia-Pacific crisis at present. We put this down to the fact that assembly capacity is constrained and demand is strong. Asia, where much of the assembly is done, needs to expand capacity to meet demand for this, one of its major exports. This sounds very positive in my opinion. Don