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Technology Stocks : Cerprobe (CRPB) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lenny Ehn who wrote (171)	7/14/1998 1:22:00 AM
From: Herschel Rubin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 201

Hi Lenny, I am also familiar with PLAB and Dupont Photomask but am not invested in them. That being said, it seems that there are different problems at play during this downturn for the mask companies like PLAB and DPMI whose prosperity normally is countercyclical to the chip industry in general. The old saying: "this time it's different" seems to ring true here. What is different now is that this is one of those rare times since Moore's Law was invented that consumers are not demanding faster and faster processors and quantum leaps in memory SIMM/DIMM's, so clearly, it is understandable that the mask companies are stalling out. The shift in buyer sentiment broadsided even Intel! Until voice recognition and video on-demand begins to drive consumer's voracious appetites for faster chips and gobs of memory, it appears that the incentive for most companies to produce new designs has been reduced by a shift in demand for low-cost PC's. Just before voice recognition, etc., begins to hit the mainstream would be an excellent time to jump into the mask companies. If I sound optimistic about CRPB it is because their business depends more on chip volume than on new designs or selling prices. So, while INTC, AMD, NSM, MU, TXN, MOT are in various price wars, they must sell more volume to maintain margins, which should benefit CRPB. Not only does CRPB make money on higher volume of chip sales, but they are the test probe market leader with 35-40% of the U.S. market and 10-12% worldwide, so they are less vulnerable to pricing pressures as are memory chip makers, and recently, the CPU chip makers. Test probe technology is not a commodity business. There may be some positive surprises for CRPB. After all, insiders bought as recently as June 2 at prices above current levels. In most other semi-related companies, there is very little insider buying.

To: Lenny Ehn who wrote (171)	7/14/1998 2:36:00 PM
From: Herschel Rubin	Respond to of 201

Lenny, Off-Topic... Just curious, of the mask companies, which is your favorite? I assume PLAB because you invested in it, but there is also DPMI and MASK. What made you choose PLAB? I'd like to keep an eye on them because they are also trading at low PE's and will move up quickly when the design cycle turns. But it will be tricky to get into position before the design cycle changes because it won't necessarily turn when the chip oversupply problem works itself out.