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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brad Rogers who wrote (17026)	3/4/1998 5:32:00 PM
From: jtechkid	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

keep telling yourself that-its a demand problem that i believe has more to do than asia-it going to get worse before it gets better-amat traded at 12 pre-split in 1996 don;t forget-in past downturns semi's bottom out usually at 1x sales-that way under 20 for amat

To: Brad Rogers who wrote (17026)	3/4/1998 5:42:00 PM
From: akidron	Respond to of 70976

no it's not going to go down like that... they kept capex where it was because it's tomorrows problem, if demand continues to be weak they'll cut for sure, and the market knows that...

To: Brad Rogers who wrote (17026)	3/4/1998 6:45:00 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

That capital spending number is exactly the one they've announced before, so no real news there except: Intel is going to keep on spending on capital equipment despite any temporary downturns. That is a good stabilizing force for AMAT. However, most players in the market are not Intel. This is going to hit everybody's stock price and make it more difficult for companies which are not cash-rich to be able to afford equipment at the moment. AMD in particular could get badly hit since they're already low on cash and have an equity offering planned to alleviate it. The market may now preclude them from doing that. The Koreans will probably continue to have funding problems as well. They were reportedly getting close to some funding arrangements for new capital expansion, but anybody who was thinking of offering them credit is going to have second (or third) thoughts given the market right now. The biggest long-term winner from all this will be Intel themselves. They've got the cash to spend through this and emerge stronger on the other side while their competition gets squeezed. AMAT probably is a long-term beneficiary as well. They have a good history of spending through downturns, often snapping up good technologies from competitors who can't weather the storm as well, and always emerging strong. The question of course is how long it takes. mg