Mr. Vassily: I cover a broad mix of the equipment food chain. In the traditional front-end process companies, I cover Applied Materials (AMAT), Novellus (NVLS), Lam Research (LRCX), and Varian Semiconductor (VSEA). I cover one inspection and metrology company, which is KLA- Tencor (KLAC). In the broadly defined, sub-component and sub-system category, I cover companies like Advanced Energy (AEIS), Asyst (ASYT), FormFactor (FORM), Photronics (PLAB) and MKS Instruments (MKSI). In the back-end and/or packaging area, I cover Ultratech (UTEK), because they're doing lithography for advanced packaging, and also Teradyne (TER) on the test side. I also cover the two major Taiwanese foundries, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) and United Microelectronics (UMC).
TWST: As you look across the group, from a business perspective, what
has gone on so far this year?
Mr. Vassily: I think it's pretty clear that we're finally getting the
fundamental recovery that people have been waiting for these last two
and a half years. Order rates for the group as a whole have started to
trend upward. That really started for the majority of the universe back
in the March/April time frame. I think from that point forward you're
likely to see on average somewhere between 5% and 10% growth in
sequential orders, again, including this Q3 and into Q4 and into the
first one to two quarters of next year. So we're back on the right
slope. We have a positive sign on the slope of the growth curve.
Tickers included in this excerpt:
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.