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Technology Stocks : FSII - The Worst is Over? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Donald Wennerstrom who wrote (2105)	7/18/1998 11:16:00 PM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2754

The following table is a different makeup from those presented before. It has to do with "growth rate". For some time I have wondered about the decline of the group stock prices when compared to the "growth rates" presented by many of the financial services. The 3 or 5 year growth rate of the semi-equips is typically listed as being between 20 to 30 percent. Yet the typical stock price of the group has been going down for the last three years. I can't see the correlation. To put the data on the same terms, I went back 3 years to 7/17/95 and listed the closing prices. I then compared those prices to the closing prices last Friday,7/17/98. That is the 1st 2 data columns in the table. Then I calculated the compound growth rate in price over that 3 year period. (Where I didn't have access to price data from 7/17/95, I couldn't compute the growth rate obviously - these stocks are at the bottom of the table) This calculation is shown in the 3rd column. About 4 weeks ago I made a list of the First Call "growth rates" for each of the stocks. That is the data shown in the 4th column. When I see the results, I don't have a good idea of what it means. It seems odd that First Call (and others) can list growth rates of 20 to 30 percent, yet the last 3 years show growth rates in price of -20 to -30 percent in many cases. It doesn't seem like this kind of performance/prediction can go on forever. In the totals at the bottom of the columns for the group, the first 2 columns are comparable, ie, if no 1995 price is shown, the 1998 price was not added in the total. This shows that for the stocks having both a 1995 and 1997 price, the 3 year price growth rate has been -17 percent. 3 YR FIRST 07/17/95 07/17/98 CPND CALL CLOSE CLOSE PRICE 5 YR SYMBOL COMPANY PRICE PRICE RTN GRTH RTE ASMLF ASM Lithography Holdings 11.66 32.56 41 VECO Veeco Instruments 20.50 26.69 9 24 ATMI ATMI Inc 14.50 17.94 7 34 AMAT Applied Materials 25.88 30.81 6 23 PLAB Photronics 17.13 19.00 4 23 NANO Nanometrics 8.00 8.25 1 29 NVLS Novellus Systems 39.50 36.88 -2 24 COHU Cohu 30.25 24.13 -7 21 PRIA Pri Automation 18.50 14.75 -7 31 TER Teradyne 40.00 26.63 -13 21 KLAC KLA Instruments 42.31 27.81 -13 23 MICN Micrion 15.63 10.00 -14 25 CMOS Credence Systems 35.75 22.00 -15 25 HELX Helix Technology 24.00 13.94 -17 18 ASYT Asyst Technologies 23.00 13.13 -17 27 UTEK Ultratech Stepper 38.25 20.13 -19 32 BRKS Brooks Automation 20.50 10.50 -20 12 WJ Watkins Johnson 51.00 23.63 -23 20 LTXX LTX 10.38 4.56 -24 16 EGLS Electroglas 30.63 12.88 -25 23 KLIC Kulicke & Soffa Industries 39.38 15.75 -26 19 SVGI Silicon Valley Group 43.13 15.50 -29 23 WFR MEMC Electronic Materials 29.75 10.31 -30 17 GSNX Gasonics 21.51 7.06 -31 22 SMTL Semitool 28.68 9.25 -31 25 FSII FSI International 29.50 9.25 -32 27 AFLX Adflex Solutions 29.25 8.19 -35 20 LRCX Lam Research 69.38 18.81 -35 20 IPEC Integrated Process Equipment 46.25 11.25 -38 27 MTSN Mattson Technology 31.13 6.00 -42 22 ASEC Aseco 21.88 4.00 -43 27 CYMI Cymer 18.38 35 CFMT CFM Technologies 10.50 50 TGAL Tegal 4.50 25 PHTN Photon Dynamics 3.13 30 IMSC Integrated Measurement Systems 9.25 20 MASK Align-Rite International 14.38 17 ETEC Etec System 34.63 23 SFLX Smartflex Systems 7.63 20 SFAM Speed Family 18.88 29 DPMI Dupont Photomasks 37.00 21 TOTALS 907 512 -17