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Technology Stocks : MEMC INT'L. (WFR -NYSE) The Sleeping Giant? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scotsman who wrote (3595)	7/2/1998 9:55:00 PM
From: Scotsman	Respond to of 4697

More stuff. We have got to be somewhere near the bottom unless we are in the Marianas Trench. Chip sales down in May.................................. news.com Chips pounded by supply, Asia crisis By Kurt Oeler Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM July 2, 1998, 1:25 p.m. PT URL: news.com Global semiconductor sales slumped by 12.7 percent in May, a consequence of Asia's economic slowdown and a worldwide glut of both microprocessors and memory, the core chips used in computers. Yesterday's news that Intel will furlough 1700 workers at two Oregon manufacturing plants for nine days confirms that even the microprocessor giant isn't immune to the collection of forces that have hit the chip industry in 1998. May chips sales totaled $9.99 billion, down from $11.46 billion in May of 1997, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics figures released by the San Jose, California-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). May sales were also down 3.9 percent from April 1998 revenues of $10.40 billion. The decline touched all four marketing regions--the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Asia-Pacific--with Japan and the Americas falling by 19 and 17 percent, respectively, on a year-by-year basis. The Asian financial crisis continues to be a prime factor in the slide, according to the SIA. The trade group earlier projected that more than half of this year's expected $3 billion contraction in Japan, the world's second-largest computer market, will come as the result of the currency troubles. Of course, currency problems have also hit other countries in Asia, whose economic straits have in turn compounded the general malaise Japan has suffered over the last few years. Combined, Asia-Pacific and Japan make up more than half of the world's chip sales, according to SIA's numbers. "A number of observers were optimistic that it [the financial crisis] would be a one or two-quarter event, but those predictions haven't quite come true," said SIA spokesman Jeff Weir. "There are clear dynamics of the marketplace being felt in semiconductors."