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Non-Tech : HMT TECHNOLOGY - UNDISCOVERED YET! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Lin who wrote (1962)	6/5/1998 1:58:00 PM
From: Kevin F. Mathis	Respond to of 2253

Maxtor going public + information concerning their growth and market risks. Interesting read for HMTT holders: cbs.marketwatch.com IMHO: If they do at all, it will be a while before KMAG and STMD go under. Best Regards, Kevin

To: Bill Lin who wrote (1962)	6/7/1998 4:06:00 PM
From: Gauguin	Respond to of 2253

HMTT vs competition ~ Komag has a lot of capacity. What good is it? Unless they can produce disks for the roughly the same cost as HMTT, disks of any capacity, does it matter how many they can produce? I'm not an expert on how these costs are estimated, and how the company's details effect them. But the difference is currently huge. "HMT's secret is that proprietary improvements to its manufacturing equipment and good quality control have insured higher yields, giving the firm a tremendous cost advantage. Deutsche Morgan Grenfell's recent report suggests that HMT's average cost per platter in the December quarter was just $6.69 versus $10.34 for Komag and $16.41 for Stormedia." fnews.yahoo.com Komag can make 150 million disks, costing 55% more than HMTT's, and maybe sell them for ornaments. Stackem in the yard. Supermarket give-aways. (Come to think of it, I actually have a couple of old disks hanging on the wall of my office, as decorations. Like gold records or something. Ideas gone platinum. But I'm not sure we can find another 75 million people like me. With my "tastes". And they were free.) With it's existing production facilities, techno processes and quality control, Komag was completely unable to compete. Their report pretty much confesses this. They are, definitely, have to be, aware that if they cannot change massively and very quickly to much more efficient quantity production, they just can't go on manufacturing disks. How much change has to take place to their production lines to make it possible? IS it possible? Can they be modified? Buy all new equipment? Dump what percentage of the old? Would new equipment be able to quickly start producing disks, in quantity, with high quality control? Would it even then be able to match what HMTT calls "proprietary" production efficiencies? I confess I have no idea what those are, and was/am skeptical myself, but given their difference in production costs, one has to look for explanations. How do they do it? It's been going on long enough to respect it. It's severely damaged these other companies. (Along with the sector meltdown, of course.) The Japanese companies are an unknown. The 7.5 gig GMR platter Komag demo'd is impressive. Can they produce it at a competitive price? Just asking some questions. It would be nice to get the exact market position of HMTT clarified. At 10$ a share, risk and reward really seem very reasonable with the information currently available.