Applied reported a more or less in line quarter, slightly beating weaker expectations. As we had projected, the October quarter is expected to have revenues down 10% which is at the low end of our expected 10-15% drop in business. Applied services helped partially make up for some of the equipment sales weakness. Revenue came in … Read More
It appears the current cycle has rolled over? The reason is memory & could be worsened by trade Figuring out length, depth and impact of the downturn? We had said that AMAT “called” the top of the cycle on their last conference call even though they may not think so. Semiconductor cycles always ends the same way. The… Read More
Maybe OMEC is the new OPEC? A bargaining chip in June trade show down?
China has started an apparent investigation into pricing of DRAM memory with Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix as targets. We find this somewhat coincidental given the current trade issues. Memory pricing has been unusually strong for a very long time. Much longer … Read More
Three critical China issues; Trade, Taiwan & Technology. China is a “double edge sword” of risk & opportunity. These issues greatly impact stock valuations. We have recently given a presentation at both the SEMI ASMC conference in Saratoga Springs and The Confab conference in Las Vegas. Both conferences… Read More
For Halloween this week we thought it would be appropriate to talk about things that strike fear into the hearts of semiconductor makers and process engineers toiling away in fabs. Do I want to do multi-patterning with the huge increase in complexity, number of steps, masks and tools or do I want to do EUV with unproven tools, unproven… Read More
We are in the midst of a number of cross currents buffeting the industry. The Korea risk seems to have escalated again and our government has thrown fuel on the fire by threatening trade agreements at the most inopportune timing possible. However we are also a week away from the roll out of one of the most anticipated Iphones ever which… Read More
As we had projected, with KLA having the highest exposure to foundry/logic of any tool company, they are seeing the most near term strength as foundries (read that as TSMC) spend big for 10NM and 7NM. In addition the first tools you buy are yield management/metrology tools which KLA is the king of.
KLA put up numbers well above estimates….Generating… Read More
The KLA deal died due to fox guarding the hen house.
Fox can’t guard Hen House…
In an industry where there are relatively few widget makers and only one, very dominant, widget inspector, the thought of one of the widget makers buying the most crucial widget inspector obviously would be anti-competitive. Not only would… Read More
* The Current Downturn is more Broadly Based…
* Back to the “bad old days” of Lemmings off a cliff???
* Its not just a Foundry thing…
* All corners of the chip industry are impacted!!!… Read More
Article confirms market fears…
An article in the Korea Times cites sources that say Samsung will cut Semi Capex by 20% due to current oversupply and weak pricing. This is obviously a huge negative as Capex for 2016 will certainly be down significantly from 2015 given these cuts which follow on cuts by Intel and others. We can… Read More
