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Technology Stocks : Cohu, Inc. (COHU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry D who wrote (993)	10/16/1998 1:35:00 AM
From: Mr. Sunshine	Respond to of 7837

A few thoughts ... With $7.00 per share cash, they would need to get an interest rate of 4.57% to pay for an 0.08 per quarter dividend. Very doable. Ergo, they are not paying the dividend from operating earnings, but basically passing along interest received on their cash to the shareholders. Seems like their dividend was increasing almost in step with the increase in cash for several years now, but that will probably stop until the industry turns around. The Interest rate would have to be a little higher than 4.57% if income taxes were factored in. Am I a genius for selling half my position at $53.50 or an imbecile for doubling my position at $26 and then again $19...? What if I double again around $12? Wish COHU would buy back some of their stock. Now is the time!!! Good (and less painful than this) Investing to All, Steve

To: Henry D who wrote (993)	10/17/1998 3:43:00 PM
From: KLINVESTOR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7837

HenryD, What a strange week. TER goes to $25 and Cohu goes to $12 now 13.50 after tracking each other pretty closely for quite a while. Your point that TER earnings should have been a tipoff is correct. TER seems to have done a better job of handling the market perception than COHU. I am very concerned about the $17 million of new orders for COHU. It is very low and the only positive spin I can think of is they may of had a significant number of cancelations like TER recorded in the 2nd quarter. Thus if they just reported the net order figure it looked terrible. It would be interesting to know the breakdown of the orders. The other factor is they are obviously reducing staff and there are costs associated with that. It is strange that Cohu did not reflect these as extraordinary costs so that they would have been broken out separately. They really do not seem to follow the pattern of most public companies of trying to take the edge off of poor earnings releases. The management and BOD of Cohu seems to be totally unconcerned about their stock price. I guess if you look at it from a longer term perspective thats ok but as a shareholder it would be nice to see them do a better job of telling their story so to speak. I think Cohu will do extremely well in the next semi-equip rebound the only issue is when will that be. It is hard to exhibit patience when the stock price just keeps going down. I guess it could be worse. ASEC and ATRM look like they are absolutely desparate. From a longer term perspective I think Cohu should begin positioning themselves for a buyout. They are a great company but being part of a larger organization would definitely be in the best interest of the shareholders. TER is the most natural prospect but given the quarters sell-off COHU has to be concerned about an unfriendly offer at these prices. Poison pill or not. Unless their equipment is going to be replaced by another process COHU is worth a lot more than it is trading for but I have been saying that for quite a while now. From an industry perspective I think Intels investment in Micron is a clear demonstration of what the big players are concerned about and that is insufficient capacity coming in the next few years. As bad as this down cycle has been in the semi business I think what it is doing is setting us up for a big rebound due to lack of current investment by semi companies. Time will tell. This coming weeks price action for Cohu will be interesting. Obviously there will be earning reductions coming from the analysts. On the offset Friday's price held up pretty well and the closing bid ask was $13.50 by $14.00 which I believe means some longer term players were looking at taking advantage of this sell-off. Fifteen months ago we had some days when the stock jumped $8 in one day. Oh well. Here hoping for a strong 4th quarter and 1999 for PC sales!