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Technology Stocks : Seagate Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Thrifty Investor who wrote (4559)	1/20/1998 10:24:00 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7841

From article on HTCH's earnings: Wayne M. Fortun, Hutchinson Technology's president and chief executive officer, attributed the first quarter net loss to continued weak demand for suspension assemblies. "The weakening demand for conventional suspensions that began in our fiscal 1997 third quarter continued into the first quarter, with demand for suspensions used in high-end servers being particularly soft," said Fortun. Not good for SEG, although just a confirmation of what we already knew. On Cramer's comments: I mostly agree with him about Neff. Neff has been touting SEG for about 4 years now. His comments have fairly consistently shown that he knows next to nothing about DDs. But, FWIW, my own views are somewhat "between Neff's and Cramer's", as you say, Thrifty. Cramer thinks that DD bizz will be a return to the 80s, a period of profitless growth and constant shakeouts for the industry. However, this time there are as many companies to shake out, and I don't think that the Koreans in particular won't be allowed to do to the DD bizz what they did to the DRAM bizz. Even if they try, they won't get access to enough credit/capital to pull it off. Already, I have read that semi equipment companies are trying to deal with them on a cash basis. As in, "Sure, we'll sell you the stuff, show us $2 billion dollars first." They will be forced to learn that they can't be all things to all people, especially in capital intensive industries like DDs and semis. So are they going to push DDs, which are small potatoes in terms of potential revenues compared to semis, and where they don't have even close to a leadership position?