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

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (19830)	6/2/1998 7:58:00 AM
From: shane forbes	Respond to of 70976

(TSM fab utilization at 80%, PC OEMs working off inventory, expecting Q2 pre-announcements) More bad news for the staunch AMAT bulls: ---- "Technology investors are rattled," said one equipment industry analyst familiar with the situation. He pointed to a wave of poor earnings announcements for the first quarter, and predicted that most of the major semiconductor firms could preannounce poor earnings for the second quarter ending in June as well. In fact, this may turn out to be a very difficult period for the entire industry, according to the analyst. Fab capacity utilization rates are down this quarter, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which is running only about 80% full. Many of the large PC OEMs have decreased chip orders as they work through an inventory backlog, but are waiting until Windows 98 and Intel Corp.'s expected microprocessor price cuts before they resume full-volume production. "The bottom line is that motherboard production ground to a halt in May," he said. "The first quarter was disappointing, and it looks like the second quarter, which at first looked like it would be flat to up slightly, now looks like it will be down." And all of this makes now a poor time to issue more shares of DPI stock. "This is not the right environment to get a deal like this done," he noted. ---- shane (Taiwan was one of the few relatively strong spots for AMAT - they normally are at close to 100% utilization I believe)