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

To: Gottfried who wrote (20320)	6/13/1998 5:40:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Open letter to Smart Money Magazine: I just read your article in the Stockscreen section of your June 1998 edition. It is on the semi-conductor equipment industry, focusing on the leader, Applied Materials. Without doing any research, I spotted 3 errors. These are not differences of interpretation or opinion. These are cases where the author simply got his facts wrong. And the facts are not technical arcana. They are data that could easily be checked on numerous public databases. A few minutes on the internet, or asking the frequent posters on the Silicon Investor AMAT thread, would have avoided the errors. They are: 1. "Applied.....gets a big chunk of its business from Korea and Malaysia." Wrong. AMAT sells almost nothing to Malaysia. In east Asia, their customers are Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. 2. "late last year, its shares tumbled from 54 to 22." Wrong. The low for the second half of 1997 was 26. 3. "most semiconductor-equipment companies.....have little debt and lots of cash, a legacy of successful stock offerings during the recent good times." Wrong. The "recent good times" were 1997 and 1995. AMAT had its IPO decades ago, and has had no secondary public offering during the "recent good times". It has a lot of cash because it has made a lot of profits. By the way, I agree with the conclusion of the article. But the obvious and easily checkable errors have made me decide to stop reading your magazine. Your writers are sloppy, and your editors obviously don't check the writer's facts. Sincerely, Jacob Snyder ps: the stock is down 20% (35 to 28) since you recommended it.