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To: shane forbes who wrote (14879)	9/10/1998 9:57:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25814

NEC, Lucent agree to cooperate on embedded DRAMs Posted at 11:39 a.m. PDT Thursday, September 10, 1998 TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's top semiconductor maker NEC Corp.and Lucent Technologies Inc., one of the biggest telecommunications equipment makers in the United States, joined hands Thursday to develop chips that would support next-generation communication systems and digital home appliances. NEC and Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group agreed to cooperate on a new semiconductor business called system LSIs (large scale integration) that combines multiple functions on a chip. NEC is Japan's biggest maker of DRAMs, the main memory of personal computers. An NEC spokesman said it would manufacture ASIC chips designed by Lucent using NEC technology. He said the new chip resulting from the cooperation will have a broad application, including communications systems and digital information home appliances, and were likely to go on sale in June or July next year. Major Japanese chip makers, reeling from a serious DRAM slump, are increasingly shifting their focus to a new range of business, including system LSIs, which promises to improve their profit margins. Demand for system LSI products is expected to boom over the next few years as digital televisions, mobile phones and a new generation of sophisticated, more compact household electronic products hit the market. Japanese chip companies are also rushing to tie up to strengthen the system LSI business. Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd said in July that it would use International Business Machines Corp.'s semiconductor technology to expand its business in system LSI chips for digital consumer and network appliances. Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd said in April that Cadence Design Systems Inc. had agreed to provide it with advice on the development of system LSI chips. Oki said earlier that it planned to reduce the weight of memory chips in its total semiconductor production to about one-third from the current half, while raising the weight of LSI and logic IC (integrated circuit) chips to two-thirds. o~~~ O

To: shane forbes who wrote (14879)	9/10/1998 11:05:00 PM
From: Grand Poobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25814

//OT re: semi-equips Shane, I think WJ's semiequip operations are in big big trouble. SFAM (maybe) FSII looks like they are having serious problems with cash flow and for whatever reason I have never been a fan of LRCX) I am curious about your reasons for including SFAM on the list. They are a stock I have been following since they were at $12 in 1997. My interest in buying them and my having available cash have not yet coincided to this point, but they always seem to be around the top of my list somewhere because I think CMP is going to do well in the next few years. When I look at them now, I see a company selling for $9/sh that has a book value of about $18/sh and cash of around $8.75/sh. It is true that they are experiencing negative cash flow right now, to the tune of about $7-10m/qtr., but at that rate it will take a while to dissipate $140m. Lehman Brothers rate SFAM a buy with a long-term target of $55 and said at the end of July that "we think SpeedFam will be able to maintain or slightly increase its CMP market share" referring to FY1999. This does not seem to me to be a company that is in imminent danger of collapse. I know there is concern because some of their biggest customers are Korean and because of fear that AMAT may be eating away their market share. I had set a buy target of $23 several months back, but reconsidered that when the semi-equip intermediate-term future started to look more dismal. At $9 this stock is looking a lot more attractive to me, if and when I have some cash lying around. However, I am definitely concerned that I not buy into a collapsing company and am curious to hear your thoughts on it. Regards, G.P.