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

To: Duker who wrote (29403)	4/6/1999 6:08:00 PM
From: Jeffrey D	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

From H&Q today. NVLS was put on their focus list. Jeff << Strong Rebound in the Capital Equipment Industry: Coming from a severe industry-wide downturn in 1998, the semiconductor equipment industry witnessed a faster than expected recovery in the general business environment during the first quarter of 1999. We expect significant upside in bookings and earnings during the upcoming earning season, particularly from the major companies in this sector, including Novellus and Applied Materials (AMAT, 65 3/4, Not Rated). We believe book to bill ratios have the potential to exceed 1.3 for these companies. Strong order activities across geographic regions: In addition to a strong technology upgrade cycle in the US, we believe that equipment orders from international markets, including Taiwan, Korea and Japan, are trending up sequentially, indicating a broad based global recovery in capital spending. Novellus well positioned to take advantage of the copper transition: We believe that some of the major semiconductor companies will close their tool selection processes for their copper interconnect development or pilot lines around June this year. This should bode well with Novellus, particularly its electroplating tool SABRE, because it has been the only production-worthy tool on the market until Applied Materials annouces its electroplating product later this week.>>