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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (5125)	12/30/1998 8:07:00 PM
From: Stitch	Respond to of 9256

Z; <<By the way, what's the word on drive supply and demand conditions and pc sell thru as you hear it? Its been very quiet on these threads and from the analysts lately but Best Buy has been a traffic jam. Also, seeing anything which might be adverse to HTCH which is still ramping TSA very nicely?>> Z, from what I can see the industry is slipping back into a similar state of FLBA (future looks bright ahead) that it was in pre down cycle. Many that I talk to are so relieved to have orders to work against that they , IMO, have been lulled into believing that the DD industry is on its way to full recovery. But I do not share that opinion. We are still weighing too much capacity against too small a market IMO. Appaqrently Fujitsu has decided that capacity is still the primary weapon of war and has recently made known plans for significant expansion in Thailand in addition to what is already underway in the Philippines. They have announced a plan to spend $400M in expansion in Thailand and target vcolumes of 3 million drives per month WW by the year 2001. They currently have about 9% market share and expect to grow it to 20% by that time. As to Hutchinson, I agree that they stand in a sweet spot for the moment. But I note that Fujitsu is not a customer. And I am still troubled by issues of execution and wonder how long they can afford to give the competition a chance to catch up. The thing we would like to know about HTCH is what are there yield figures over the last several months and whether they are improving substantially. Best, Stitch