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

To: HoodBuilder who wrote (2242)	12/3/1997 1:10:00 PM
From: j g cordes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5482

Michael, long some KLIC also.. anyone have strong opinions on entering SVGI long today? Jim

To: HoodBuilder who wrote (2242)	12/3/1997 1:16:00 PM
From: Dr. Doktor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5482

Comments from today's Infrastructure Daily Notes: It seems there are two totally opposite views of the semi equip group and currently the bears are way ahead. BTW, Infrastructure is a great publication to get a feel for the sector and business climate. Semiconductor shares are getting hammered as Merrill Lynch analyst Tom Kurlak made very negative comments about the group. We listened to a tape of Mr. Kurlak's conference call and a lot of what he told the street sounded eerily familiar! The part of Mr. Kurlak's story that really hurt the group was his expectation for 1998 semiconductor capital spending. Comments were made on the conference call that hinted at a 40 to 50 percent reduction in capital spending for 1998! What? How come Merrill's semiconductor equipment analyst, Robert Stern, is not telling people to dump all their semiconductor equipment stocks? A 40 to 50 percent reduction in capital spending? One has to believe Mr. Kurlak sees a major recession on the horizon to support this view. All we can say is "shooting from the hip" and going with Mr. Kurlak's hunch that business will weaken enough to prompt a dramatic plunge in capital spending, flies in the face of almost every piece of evidence we have seen over the past two months. Texas Instruments (TXN), another firm that Mr. Kurlak downgraded yesterday, has come out on the wires saying pricing pressures will likely continue over the next 2-3 months but they believe the currency crisis in Asia will actually benefit the chip industry. We agree! Who are you going to believe? We have to acknowledge that Mr. Kurlack moves markets - in many instances for all the wrong reasons. It troubles us to see the herd thundering behind an analyst that could not see memory prices continuing their fall earlier this year and also believed increased semiconductor content in PCs would drive profits at Intel much higher. With this track record how can anyone have faith in his current forecast for a two year industry slowdown? HYUNDAI BUYS 86 BONDERS FROM K&S ================================ Today, Dec. 2, 1997, Kulicke & Soffa reported that they received an order from Hyundai for 86 additional K&S Model 1488 plus gold ball bonders for its production facility in Ichon City, Korea. This order comes from the Semiconductor Assembly & Test Division of Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Ltd., which is a major assembly subcontractor. This buy is in addition to 436 machines purchased earlier this year by this same division. This announcement tells us three things. Firstly, unit chip volumes continue to grow - especially for these leading edge packages. Secondly, even in tight financial times, Hyundai still is investing strategically in capital expansion to maximize revenues (and exports). Finally, note that this is the sub-contract division who would no doubt get capacity if it was available from the semiconductor group. Again a confirmation that back-end capacity is at its limit and continuing unit demand will fuel test and assembly equipment purchases.