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

To: shane forbes who wrote (5483)	5/20/1998 5:52:00 PM
From: shane forbes	Respond to of 10921

on further thought one more comment: I just realized that it is not incoceivable that we could have 850 million in bookings and 1.20 billion in revenue sometime in the next couple of months. Except for the averaging that's a 0.70 BTB. So maybe I will continue to believe in my 0.65 worst case BTB going forward... (Last time revenues did not drop as severely as bookings did and in Aug. '96 we had a 0.70 BTB.) Shane.

To: shane forbes who wrote (5483)	5/20/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Shane, Re:interesting I think is that the revenues have held up while bookings are going away. To me this means there ain't much new buying going on right now - all old stuff, perhaps mostly "maintenance" + "spare parts" minor upgrades that sort of thing. This is exactly what AMAT said in the CC: exchange2000.com

To: shane forbes who wrote (5483)	5/20/1998 10:26:00 PM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10921

>>What is interesting I think is that the revenues have held up while bookings are going away. To me this means there ain't much new buying going on right now - all old stuff, perhaps mostly "maintenance" + "spare parts" minor upgrades that sort of thing. No huge spending jumps. Maybe Katherine can corrobate that out of traditional l/t revenues for semi-equips about 40-50% is for "semi- maintenance revenue" etc. (thanks to GP for this rough answer).<< Revenue has held up partly because they're still shipping equipment ordered as much as a year ago (depending on the individual company)--semi equipment isn't normally paid for until shipped and accepted by the fab's incoming QA. I don't know about the 40-50% figure specifically for maintenance, parts, etc, but that stuff is a pretty big chunk. The number was once so big that Mattson, for instance, took a large bite out of the etch market simply by promising to reduce it for their equipment, and a very healthy third party parts market sprang up (before some of the key players went to jail for industrial espionage, but that's another story). Since then (i.e. within the last 2-3 years) maintenance costs have become more competitive, but are still high enough that everyone gripes about them. The following isn't the definitive answer, but does provide a little bit of an indicator. This is what AMAT keeps in inventory (in thousands), from their latest 10-Q. edgar-online.com January 25, 1998 October 26, 1997 ---------------- ---------------- Customer service spares $213,488 $207,938 Systems raw materials 135,303 106,406 Work-in-process 282,072 256,737 Finished goods 114,563 115,370 -------- -------- $745,426 $686,451 ======== ======== Katherine PS Anyone know how I can make an included chart like this one look decent? I'm an HTML-illiterate, so please be gentle.