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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (26872)	3/20/1998 6:49:00 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

>>1. Did the stock run before the Samsung announcement? If so, then the good news was already in the stock.<< mike, the stock did go from $6 5/8 to $8 a while prior to the agreement. before that, though, it was $9. kind of hard to tell. seems very paltry when the market for your lead product just tripled. >>2. Sales are great, but what about margins? Sadly, we never know the price vs. cost of sales until they work their way through the income statement.<< they earned $1.2 million on $15.5 million in sales - up from $10 million last year. >>3. Are they protected on currency? Getting paid in Yuan isn't that great a deal right now.<< good question. i don't remember them saying that this affected them at all with sony. i'll look into it. >>4. Does anyone make big bucks in these types of commodity markets? What does Sweet Tex have that Optical Coating and many others do not? And how long can they maintain that edge. << slightly different products. not a whole bunch, though, i would prefer swtx's product (and so does sony and samsung ;-) the market is expanding at a huge rate. have you seen antireflective film on tvs? nope. you will. shortly. how big is that market? now samsung monitors will have the film, too. another double in their current output for thei lead product. i actually prefer that they are in a non glamorous market. not much incentive for the big boys to take over. well, i can see a buyout coming. maybe not soon... some snippets from the last q release... >>'Our balance sheet remained strong, with cash and equivalents at $10.5 million and a 3.4 to 1 current ratio at year end. The Company continued to meet its sales growth objectives, despite capacity constraints. By early December, our new machine in Tempe was producing high quality anti-reflective product at a rate more than double that of our older Palo Alto machine. We also continued to have more demand than capacity for supply of film for major European automotive customers. The continued strengthening of demand for automotive film was especially encouraging, and sales of that product more than doubled for the year compared to 1996. The fourth quarter was our strongest quarter ever for automotive film sales, nearly triple our previous best quarter. We anticipate continued strong growth in sales of this product in 1998.'' << >>''Sales of our Heat Mirror window film strengthened in the fourth quarter instead of decreasing, as is typical for this time of year,'' continued Mr. Schwartz. ''Sales of our Solis solar control film, used in architectural and after market automotive applications, continued strong, increasing by 70% over 1996, and our silver reflector film sales more than doubled compared to last year. The solar control films for automotive are sold primarily to GMX Associates of Singapore, and continued to show strong growth. That growth was primarily due to GMX's expansion into other territories, and we are optimistic that sales growth will continue during 1998 and provide a long term growth path for the product.'' << >>''Our new sputter coater was producing at a rate adequate to meet our minimum requirements for supply of anti-reflective film on the Sony contract by the end of December,'' said Mr. Schwartz. ''We expect continued improvement in throughput and yields during 1998.'' << swtx's 8% net margin is pretty darn good. with sales growing at 50% per year - even though swtx can't meet demand due to capacity constraints - i expect that margin to drop a point or so. eps should continue to go up nicely. this market is huge and getting huger. the players are all small right now. tvs, cars, houses, storefront windows, picture glass, etc. all could use this product. swtx is in an excellent position - samsung and sony are key customers and they aren't amateurs. i wouldn't be surprised to see $0.17 this q and $0.25 within 4 qs. sound good so far? beat me mike. i like the contrary opinion. it keeps me in line...