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Technology Stocks : Applied Magnetics Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rational who wrote (10597)	12/4/1997 7:17:00 PM
From: Rational	Respond to of 12298

This is from APM web-site (I think already posted): Development and commercialization of MR disk heads continue to be a major investment for Applied Magnetics. In 1996 we entered production on our first volume MR disk head program. We qualified for additional production programs in 1997, and we continue to ship prototype and qualification samples of MR disk head products to selected customers for drive applications that are expected to require areal densities of nearly 1,600 megabits per square inch during 1997 and over 3,000 megabits per square inch in 1998.

To: Rational who wrote (10597)	12/4/1997 7:25:00 PM
From: Rational	Respond to of 12298

To all: This is from APM web-site: Currently Applied Magnetics has approximately 9,000 employees, of whom about 1,100 are located in California, 250 in Ireland, and more than 7,500 in Asia. To meet planned growth in production requirements, we are expanding our factories in Malaysia, Korea, China, and the Philippines. We are currently underway with a major expansion of our wafer fabrication facilities in Goleta, California. The Asian staff will (IMO) generate a fabulous reduction in the cost of operation due to currency devaluation of about 30% in those SEAsian countries. Sankar

To: Rational who wrote (10597)	12/4/1997 8:05:00 PM
From: T Bowl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12298

<<This shows that APM is already producing MR in volume and its higher volume production will start by April 1998.>> MR rev for APM has been: $7.1mil, $4.6mil, $7.2mil for the last 3 Qs. Using an ASP of around $11 or so shows they produced around: 650k, 420k, 650k MR heads each Q. todd

To: Rational who wrote (10597)	12/4/1997 8:33:00 PM
From: T Bowl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12298

Sankar - <<WDC might have waited until APM could produce MR and GMR in volume>> Here are some statements in the past that have scared me: "TFI heads have much higher yield than MR, more profit, revenue of MR will not exceed TFI for quite some time" Crisman 09Sep97 " The 1.7 GB should last us at least 3 quarters, could be more" Crisman 09Sep97 {Dec, Mar, Jun} "Net sales and gross margins in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1997 were negatively impacted by lower yields on newly qualified magnetoresistive (MR) programs and 1.7-gigabyte-per-3.5"-disk inductive thin film products, which were in their first full quarter of volume production." APM earnings release 23Oct97 {See the note above about lower MR yields} " The company believes that its pico form factor inductive thin film product solutions at the 1.7-gigabyte-per-3.5"-disk capacity point continue to offer its customers superior price/performance value and plans volume production of these products through fiscal year 1998"APM earnings release 23Oct97. {They expected product to ship 1.7GB heads in volume thru Sep98.} "The company is continuing its commitment to MR product development and became qualified on two new customer drive programs during the quarter, for high-end and for portable-disk-drive applications"APM earnings release 23Oct97. {WDC portfolio is gone, Micropolis is gone(I believe this is the other..).} None of these statements suggest to me that APM is producing MR in volume and with decent yields. todd