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Technology Stocks : PLASMA THERM (PTIS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stephen Ettorre who wrote (288)	12/26/1997 5:48:00 PM
From: C. Shivery	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 509

Steve, approximately 1/3 of sales have been from in the thin film head market. However, since Versalock can be used in the MEMS market, Optoelectronics/Telcom, and photomask, I doubt that PTIS would cut prices for one segment of the market. Also I looked at some semi equipment stocks and the effect of the Asia scare: The highs were on or about the Aug/Sep timeframe and the lows are aprox where the stock is now: PRIA 59 to 28 (52% drop) KLIC 58 to 17 (70% drop) KLAC 76 tp 38 (50% drop) AMAT 54 to 29 (46% drop) TER 59 to 32 (45% drop) LRCX 67 to 30 (55% drop) and now for PTIS 12 to 6 (50% drop) I contend if 1/3 of the sales of the companies sales dried up from Asia that it should not impact the companies net revenue by 50-60%. The market has experienced a knee jerk reaction to the scare. Japan is currently the largest buyer of semi equipment and even though their economy is in the tank, they will not want to fall behind all the competitors in the business. I am not saying that it is a non-event for PTIS, however PTIS's Japanese distributor only accounted for 8% of sales in 1996. They have just begun to crack the foreign markets. One more thing to keep in mind. In 1996, PTIS's net profit was 2.99 MM. In addition, the R&D budget for 1996 was 2.88MM, so if the company want to "drive up" the net income, all they have to do is cut R&D expenses. In addition, they paid 1.8 MM in taxes in 1996. I think the management is in this for the long term, and that the company's future is very bright. We will see this time next year whether this is true. Ask yourself this: Are semiconductors going away? Will manufacturing equipment wear out? Is there a need for new technology? Does the market always act in logical ways? All this is, of course, just my opinion.