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Technology Stocks : Speedfam [SFAM] Lovers Unite ! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Sam who wrote (3364)	4/24/1999 10:32:00 PM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3736

Mr. Sam: Re: "CMP is going to have a much higher growth rate than semiconductor equipment in general coming out of this downturn, so I want to be disproportionately invested in the CMP sector. SFAM is the purest play in the sector. I'm not aware of any other public company for which CMP accounts for more than 25% of revenues. (One company that might come close is Lam (LRCX). Their acquisition of On-Trak gives them the dominant post-CMP scrub tool, and one ships with about 85% of the polishers that are sold by any polisher company. Additionally, they are starting to sell their Teres polisher--no revenue from it yet--so that will add to their potential as a CMP segment play in the future. Lam expects to return to profitability in the current quarter with about a $0.10 profit according to their conference call this week.) Agree, SFAM is the pure play. Re: "Additionally, SpeedFam-IPEC is a very cheap stock, and it has a lot of its problems priced into the stock at this point. Their biggest technical problems are solvable, and I expect them to get fixed in time to win the orders for the next big wave of new fab construction announcements." Agreed, the stock is priced for failure. I figure pro forma book in the range of about $13. Read my posting history and you will see that I named SFAM as a "Bottom Fishing" pick of the week on a thread. The analysts have given up on SFAM and have given total and unconditional victory to AMAT. Re: "The disruption created by the merger is almost over, and the benefits will start to kick in later this year. I expect SFAM to hold on to 20%-25% or so of the market (new tool orders) and to increase that next year. The segment should have a 60% or so growth rate for a few years coming out of the downturn. A modest share of such a rapidly growing market would be just fine." Whoa, Nellie!! CMP by all industry accounts will have a compound annual growth rate of 25% to 30%. So I assume you think it will be much higher coming out of the starting blocks. Is this correct and why is this so? I also assume that you believe this cycle will last much longer than the one in 1997. Can you give us any indication of why you might believe this cycle has legs that will last at least into next year? Thank you for your participation here.