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Technology Stocks : LTX Corp. (LTXX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jeffbas who wrote (1308)	8/3/1998 3:50:00 PM
From: ATELifer	Respond to of 2126

Jeffrey, As to your first question on the odds of Fusion being a market success and justify their price. On paper, the Fusion product offers more than the competition. Assuming they can: 1) deliver on those specs in a timely manner 2) the system is far more reliable than their previous products 3) they can train enough people to support them in the field 4) get their customers to a point where they are self- sufficient, 5)make good margin on the product then the odds are relatively good it will be a market success and justify a premium price. As to your question about the percentage of ATE company revenues driven from existing vs. new fabs? I'm not really sure how to answer that. In general, new testers don't get purchased until the demand for semiconductors increases, i.e. new fabs OR the technology changes in a way to obsolete the old test technology. Since Fusion is a product targeted at supposedly new technology, i.e. "SOC" it is therefore most beneficial to the new fabs. Don't forget that there is an over-capacity in the existing fabs today and this will have to be fully consumed before major growth can be expected. As to my reference to "supposedly new technology". I don't think SOC is really anything new. It's been with us for some time and the existing testers have been evolving to handle it. The concept that LTX has the "ONLY" system capable of handling SOC is pretty funny. Schlumberger's EXA platforms, Teradyne's Catalyst, Credence's DUO and Quartet have been dealing with increased integration of digital, memory, and analog for years. It's just that now someone coined a new name for it called SOC. -AL