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

To: Carl R. who wrote (29795)	4/29/1999 12:02:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 70976

Thanks for the clarification. In the US, TI got out of the DRAM business. In Italy, there was another company that got out (I can't remember), in Japan, Hitachi and Toshiba, have plans to get out (I think there are more companies, but I don't know their names), in Taiwan a number of small DRAM makers have started to move to make logic instead of DRAM (though I doubt that they can pull it off), in Korea Samsung bought (merged) Hyundai's operations (it is unlikely that they will run it at full tilt while they are losing money). All in all I'd say that there have been substantial changes to the landscape. The survivors are in pretty bad shapes themself. This is evident by looking at MU and Samsung (I wish I could trade it) who are the number 1 and 2 producers in terms of volume and effeciency. When the generals are bleeding, the soldiers must be dying. As for AMAT's valuations, the range that I gave was specific to AMAT; I was not commenting on the general industry. I think once AMAT traded above 4.5 times forward revenue. But such hights are short lived. Don't get me wrong, AMAT is a great company and if you buy it here, chances are that you'll be making money in 3 years. But I am suspicious of its short term performance. Sun Tzu P.S. A while back I posted the historical valuations and sales growth of AMAT over the past 10 years. It may be a good idea to look at that post again and watch the chart for the corresponding periods.