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To: Czechsinthemail who wrote (15707)	10/22/1998 1:03:00 PM
From: Andrew Vance	Respond to of 17305

AV--I sat in on the conference call yesterday and the news was not good from a financial perspective. If you listened to the peripheral stuff you get a different picture. Eveyone admitted that business stunk and would continue to stink until the industry turns around. They have had their share of layoffs and facility consolidations already and have put all cost controls in place. they are working to improve the margins on the HINE components, and all the other like comments. they are burning cash (close to $1M) aggressively going after Jenoptik on patent infringement issues along with its parent company. What I think did not fall on deaf ears is the general somber attitude of the managementwhen presenting these numbers and the reserved and conservative comments made by them. I think they have been knocked down a step or two based on the recent stock option vote issue. Clearly they have told the audience that things are bad right now. But they clearly and unequivocally outlined how well they are staged for a recovery when business turns around. This is almost like a rocketship burning fuel waiting for lift off. They are effectively the vendor of choice for wafer handling on the 2 most exciting enabling technologies, CMP and Copper. They will be a major player in the 300mm conversion when it occurs since they are already designed in. They are the vendor of choice for the present 200mm systems, when they start shipping again. They are poised for the 200mm retrofit programs for existing wafer fabs, when those come back on line. Everything is in place for huge success, just waiting for the turnaround. They look to be lean and mean just waiting to pounce and bounce back. with that said, I still will restate my position that they may lag the recovery since most of this stuff they will provide takes money from their end users or OEM customers. We will see the IC companies recover first and when they start putting good profits together, they will upgrade or buy new equipment. These purchase orders will help bolster the equipment stocks and then filter down to components to ASYT's balance sheet. The factory automation part of their business could recover faster if these types of systems are used as cost reduction programs during these uncertain times. finally, the ray of sunshine has to be the sales of units dealing with the CMP and Copper technologies. these alone could contribute to some nice financials as EVERYONE runs out to implement these technologies and orders equipment. We already alluded to the NVLS situation which ASYT is designed into. NVLS is on a tear and it has to be the Copper system, in my opinion. the other guys to watch would be IPEC and SFAM for the CMP, along with LRCX. BTW-LRCX was a veryt small commentary about being way undervalued. It seems like I wasn't the only one to take notice of that. LRCX is performing well. Andrew