The semiconductor industry is back ordering manufacturing equipment in a major way with Applied Materials, the No.1 maker of IC manufacturing equipment, reporting orders up 29%, and sales up 24%, in calendar Q1 2010 over Q409. The company is expecting 60% growth in sales this year.
“Global demand for computing and consumer electronics is giving our customers the confidence to make significant capacity additions, fuelling what we believe will be a multiyear growth cycle”, says Applied’s CEO Mike Splinter. For calendar Q2 2010, Applied expects net sales to be in the range of -2% to +5% compared to calendar Q1.
Sales for Q1 were £2.5bn, operating profit was $386m and the net income was $264m compared to $83m in Q409 and a loss of $255m in Q109.
Gross margin was 40.4%, operating cash flow was $527m, representing 23% of sales,
$100m was spent to repurchase 7.6m shares., and cash, cash equivalents and investments ended the quarter at $3.57bn.
The backlog increased by $59m to $2.99bn and included negative backlog adjustments of $184m.
The IC-related business had new orders of $1.42bn, net sales of $1.40bn and operating income of $498m. The net sales increase of 45% over Q409 reflected higher shipments to foundry and DRAM customers along with the addition of Semitool. New order composition was: DRAM 41%, foundry 37%, logic and other 12%, and flash 10%.
Applied Global Services (AGS) had new orders of $483m. Net sales were $456m, up 7% sequentially, and operating income was $90m.
The Display group had new orders of $256m, net sales of $270m and operating income of $90m. Net sales more than doubled over the first quarter primarily driven by Generation 8.5 system shipments.
The Energy and Environmental Solutions (EES) group had new orders of $378m net sales of $166m, down 48% from Q409 primarily due to lower thin film revenue. EES had an operating loss of $145m million, which included an $83m inventory charge related to thin film solar manufacturing equipment
David Manners
Electronics Weekly, 20/05/2010
