Mr. Schreiner: I think we are bouncing off a bottom at this point - that's the way we are looking at things. Obviously, people had very harsh and quick reactions, as some say in the industry, maybe quicker than they had ever seen in prior downturns, in the December through the March quarter, and we believe that now you are starting to see kind of a bounce-back off of those depleted levels. The question going forward is, do we bounce along here before moving higher or have we already seen the bottom and started our climb back up? Those are some of the answers we are trying to find through earnings season. While to date some of the semiconductor earnings have been positive, it will still need to be seen whether the overall demand can remain at sustained levels as we move beyond the September quarter into December and into 2010.
TWST: Hans, what's your take on what we are seeing in this marketplace now?
Mr. Moses-mann: Well, it's fascinating. We've actually bounced off the bottom. I
think the bottom was probably at the beginning of the year and we've seen a very
impressive return to some semblance of seasonality, which has everybody
perplexed. Intel (INTC) has delivered good results; every few years they'll put
together something that is so decent that you're amazed. The issue is end
demand. Semiconductor analysts observe now a benign dynamic in that the supply
chain is quite efficient, and there is some inventory accumulation that is
occurring, as you would expect in some kind of a normal seasonal second half.
The issue that we can't get our hands around is really what happens with end
demand and that is a tough one. So probably, in tennis jargon, we are not at the
baseline, we are not at the net, we are in no-man's land for another few weeks
until we have evidence of back-to-school. So it's a really challenging time for
analysts and investors alike to figure out what we do for an encore now that Q2
numbers, as Jeffrey was saying, have been pretty good.
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