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Technology Stocks : Novellus -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (1578)	7/28/1998 2:09:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 3813

Semiconductor Equipment Up 4.8% in First Half of 1998, Says The Information Network BusinessWire, Tuesday, July 28, 1998 at 12:55 NEW TRIPOLI, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 28, 1998--Revenues for front-end processing equipment for semiconductor manufacturing rose 4.8% in the first half of 1998, according to The Information Network, a New Tripoli, Pa.- based market research company. "The second quarter of 1998 was marked by a drop in revenues of 7.7%, following a robust first quarter where a large backlog of orders pushed up revenues more than 15%," says Dr. Robert N. Castellano, President of The Information Network. "We're still waiting for bellwether Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) to announce next month, but we anticipate only a 5-7% drop in sales for their fiscal quarter." There are several indicators pointing to an uptick in semiconductor sales that started in the third quarter of 1998. Both long-term business and inventory correction cycles appear to be over. PC sales were up 10% in the U.S., 20% in Europe, and 7% worldwide. Prices of 64 Mbit SDRAMs have been flat at $9.90 since June 19 and prices of 16 Mbit SDRAMS have been flat at $2.00 since July 10 and up from $1.85 on June 26. Pentium II (300 MHz) prices are $310, up from $290 on July 17, and Pentium II (233 MHz) prices are $210, up from $155 on June 12. "Equipment sales generally follow 6 months later, so we project that the market for front-end processing equipment will drop a total of 9.3% in 1998 but will grow 10.4% in 1999," notes Dr. Castellano. The Information Network is a leading consulting and market research company addressing the semiconductor, computer, and telecommunications industries. CONTACT: The Information Network Dr. Robert N. Castellano, 610/285-4548 Web: theinformationnet.com KEYWORD: PENNSYLVANIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED Today's News On The Net - Business Wire's full file on the Internet with Hyperlinks to your home page. URL: businesswire.com Copyright 1998, Business Wire

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (1578)	7/29/1998 3:41:00 PM
From: Teri Skogerboe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3813

Re: "doubtful anybody wishes me luck" well said (your entire post) and I wish you luck! ;-) It seems that it pays to be gullible these days. Question is: will this end and when.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (1578)	8/7/1998 1:39:00 PM
From: Dave Chanoux	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3813

Fun with numbers! I wrote this a few days ago but didn't post it because of all the market turmoil. I didn't think anyone would read about Accounts Receivable when the bottom was falling out of the market. There was some discussion of the level of Novellus A/R at the end of Q2. Here is some data on Novellus DSO numbers. Some would consider DSO a better statistic than simply Accounts Receivable because it factors in the level of sales. DSO is calculated as (days, typically 90)*(A/R)/(Sales) and measures how long it takes to collect. Here is some history of Novellus quarter-ending DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) for the last 10 quarters. This puts the discussion of A/R into a little different perspective. Qtr End Sales A/R DSO 06/98 142.8 171.5 108 03/98 163.2 183.4 101 12/97 162.8 133.9 074 09/97 155.0 141.7 082 06/97 114.4 134.1 105 03/97 101.6 129.1 114 12/96 104.6 119.7 102 09/96 121.6 115.5 085 06/96 120.2 114.0 085 03/96 115.2 116.9 091 Source: Press releases on Novellus website at novellus.com What makes DSO go up? - Some time ago one of the fast growing COM companies, Ascend or Cascade or one of those, shipped everything that wasn't nailed down at the end of a quarter to make expected numbers. The analysts picked it up by observing a sharp increase in DSO, and concluding that the company was stealing from the future. It turned out they were right! It looks like Novellus might have done that in Q1, but we weren't quick enough to question it then. What makes DSO go down? - declining A/R or shipping early in the quarter and collecting. The disk drive component folks like Applied Magnetics are suffering from declining DSO right now. Changes in financial practices show up in DSO also. My conclusion from all this: DSO is about the same as it was last year at this time - no fundamental change in the financial management of the business. Remember, these fundamentals might not have much influence on the short term stock price. Regards, Dave Chanoux