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

To: stockycd who wrote (20485)	6/17/1998 7:38:00 AM
From: Dr. Bob	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

"Then its off to the races by fall". I'm surprised at the optimism. What will drive the new buying? Overcapacity remains, and existing capacity can still be upgraded pretty cheaply. 300 mm isn't going to happen anytime soon. Announcements of new fabs are conspicuous by their absence. Asia has not addressed their fiscal problems. I think we'll be bumping along the bottom for quite some time, although false rallies based on hopes, not fundamentals, may occur from time to time. "Off to the races" will have to wait for the inflection point for 300 mm fabs, which will require financial stability in Asia OR full utilization of existing capacity, PLUS a qualified tool set, and I can't see that happening before sometime in 1999, probably second half, based on what I read. That makes early 1999 a more likely time for the sustainable upturn to start, IMO. Bob

To: stockycd who wrote (20485)	6/17/1998 7:55:00 AM
From: jtechkid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

KLIC WARNS-BIGGER LOSS- not great news but IMO NOT TO surprising as klic sells big ticket item and one cancellation always kills them. i really think its a special situation as klic numbers are always exagerrated on the upside-stock hit 52- and on the downside. klic does 80%per cent of business from asia. here we go again, in 1996 i bought klic at 17 and the stock bottomed out at 10 then went to 50. also, book to bill was sequentially better and thats what i have been telling people. again, semi business nothing great-but hey it sucked three months ago. now , imo its a valuation concern and i think smart money is buying because stock prices in relative to book, price to sales, is not unbelievable cheap but compared to the market semi stocks are trading at a significant discount. THEIR WILL MORE PRE ANNOUNCEMENTS. but, it hard to figure this market out. last quarter, everybody warned and everything rallied--ex-klac warned and the stock rallied to 42-its now 27-nvls pre announced next quarter would be down 10% and the stock was up three to 48-its now 35. i still like klac, nvls, lscc, the strongest. i like amat, klic, lrcx, ltxx, qual, idti, alsc on any weakness. it will be very intersting tpo see what klic does today.

To: stockycd who wrote (20485)	6/17/1998 2:06:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

re: " Japan and the US will succeed in propping the Yen this time": No they won't. As long as the Japanese economy is getting smaller, the U.S. economy is getting bigger, rates of return on Japanese bonds and equities are near-zero or worse, rates of return on U.S. bonds are far higher than in Japan, then capital will continue to flow out of Japan to the U.S. As long as these conditions persist, there isn't enough cash in all the world's central banks to stop the yen's slide for more than a few weeks. The Japanese tried a little while ago, threw 20 billion $ at it, and the money disappeared with no visible effect.