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Technology Stocks : Mattson Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: EACarl who wrote (1022)	2/11/1999 2:57:00 AM
From: Q.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3661

looks like I guessed right about orders for RTP being more significant than strip, but I was sure surprised to hear that they got good orders for EPI too. I wonder who is buying the EPI products, and what they are doing with them. Are they actually going into silicon fab lines like their other products, or into R&D labs? cash burn looks like it was a little below $2 M for the quarter, which is about what Brad predicted in the previous call. I don't know how much confidence to put in listening to Brad's level of caution or enthusiasm about the outlook. This time it was about neutral, compared to somewhat shocked 3 mos. ago. In the past few quarters he's been quite wrong about the outlook more the one quarter out, not because of his fault, but rather because the business is so cyclical and nobody can predict the cycle. A year ago he predicted in a cc that "1998 will be a great year for Mattson". Those words still ring in my ears. Obviously it didn't turn out that way. I think he has about 1 quarter of visibility, and whatever he guesses beyond that is just a roll of the dice. It does appear that Q2 will be better, but he still is giving guidance for an operating loss, with $16 M rev vs. $20 M breakeven. So I would guess that its premature to do any cheerleading. One thing that I noticed he didn't mention was anything about industry consolidation. I assume he is now anticipating that the co. will not be taken over any time soon. About 2 years ago you heard him discuss consolidation quite often.