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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HB who wrote (4626)	1/29/1998 1:58:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 10921

Micron still has a bottleneck in test. Any more thoughts on how to play that? Howard, I believe Teradyne (NYSE:TER) and Advantest (Japan - don't know if it has ADRs) are the 2 leaders in this market segment. I haven't researched either or the sector. Ian.

To: HB who wrote (4626)	1/29/1998 2:36:00 PM
From: Scott Maxwell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Howard, talking about ESIO in terms of 'exposures' to various sectors is a bit misleading. Their core technology (very fast computer-controlled laser micromachining) is just starting to come into its own; some of the primary markets to date have been capacitor trimming (this is the "cellular" exposure you mentioned) and DRAM correction (yield improvement through redundant cell correction). But they haven't even started to see the business they will likely be getting in logic correction, MEMS, etc. etc. in the next few years. That's why its long-term expected growth rate is considerably higher, plus their habitually good acquisitions. It's not real ultra-cheap here, and there's a possibility of bad news soon (big exposure to Korean DRAM guys), but you probably won't ever see anything like the lows of last year again. Everybody should remember that the recent strength in semis (and to a lesser extent cap equips) is probably the market looking past the next two quarters. It's a great mistake to wait until all the clouds have left the sky before starting to buy -- by the time all the bad news is out and business conditions are producing good news, these sectors will be 50% up from here.