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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zsteve who wrote (25832)	10/29/1998 2:50:00 PM
From: Duker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

I think you should ask Blake. --Duker

To: zsteve who wrote (25832)	10/30/1998 1:42:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

October 30, 1998 Peak Chip Market, Asia Slump Contribute to Nikon's Deep Loss Dow Jones Newswires TOKYO -- Nikon Corp. said Friday that the weak global semiconductor market, Japan's recession and the regional economic crisis combined to drive its financial results far into the red in the fiscal first half. Nikon reported a parent pretax loss of 2.2 billion yen ($18.8 million) in the half ended Sept. 30 compared with pretax profit a year ago of 6.13 billion yen. The loss on an operating basis was even deeper, at 5.99 billion yen, compared with 5.08 billion yen in profit a year ago. At the bottom line, Nikon reported a net loss of 1.37 billion yen against net income of 2.64 billion yen in the year-ago half. Nikon makes cameras and ophthalmic products and is the world's leading manufacturer of steppers -- equipment used to produce semiconductors. Sales, Nikon said, tumbled 13% to 127.63 billion yen from a year earlier, led by a steep 28% decline in sales of semiconductor-making equipment to 54.9 billion yen. Camera sales increased 6.2% to 47.96 billion yen. For the fiscal year ending March 31, 1999, Nikon said it expects to report parent sales of 270 billion yen, which would represent a downturn of about 8% from the prior year's result. The company anticipates posting a pretax loss of 5 billion yen and a net loss of 6 billion yen. In the year ended March 31, 1998, Nikon's pretax profit was 16.48 billion yen, and its bottom-line number was in the black at 9.48 billion yen. The company said it doesn't expect a full-fledged recovery for its stepper business until the fiscal year beginning in April 2000, and projected that stepper sales this fiscal year will decline a little more than 30% from last year's 420 units. It sees parent-company camera sales rising around 10%. The company said it expects to lay out 13 billion yen on capital expenditures this fiscal year, down more than 20% from the 16.5 billion yen it invested in capital projects a year earlier. Last month, Nikon unveiled a restructuring plan to cut costs, including cutting 500 workers over three years and trimming headquarters staff by a third to 200 by the end of next fiscal year. The company also said it planned to cut research-and-development expenditures by 10% next fiscal year compared with this year. My comments: if the stepper business isn't going to recover till after April 2000, then the recent optimism about semi-equips, and in particular the continuation of nvls's btb>1 prediction,( which is the basis for that stock's doubling this month), is false hope. I'm still holding all my (nearly worthless) puts, and thinking of doubling up on them. In the last 3 days, I'm seeing (finally) some stalling in the upward momentum, and a declining relative strength.