Novellus Systems, Inc. Q4 2004 Mid-Quarter Conference Call Webcast - Final.

Original Source: FD (FAIR DISCLOSURE) WIRE

OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Novellus Systems mid-quarter conference call. During the presentation all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards you will be invited to participate in the question and answer session. As a reminder this conference is being recorded. Your speakers for today are Richard Hill, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Kevin Royal. Please go ahead, sir.

KEVIN ROYAL, CFO, NOVELLUS SYSTEMS, INC.: Good afternoon. My name is Kevin Royal, Chief Financial Officer of Novellus. With me on today's call is our Chairman and CEO, Rick Hill. This afternoon Rick will discuss the state of the business and the outlook for the current quarter, we'll then address any questions you wish to ask. Some of our comments made during the course of our formal presentation and during the question and answer session following which refer to the Company's or managements intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations, or a prediction of the future including without limitations, statements regarding expected semi-conductor industry growth, expected capital equipment spending, managements projected bookings, shipments, revenue and earnings per share targets for the fourth quarter of 2004, the Company's commitment to growth in revenues and profits, the Company's progress in securing bookings with leading semi-conductor manufacturers, our financial model and other anticipated future events are forward-looking statements. Please keep in mind that actual results could differ materially from those projected in any of our forward-looking statements. We have provided additional information in our Form 10(K) for 2003 and in previous Form 10(Q)s concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. If you do not have a copy of the Form 10(K) or the Form 10(Q)s we would be happy to provide these to you. I will now turn it over to Rick. Thank you.

RICK HILL, CHAIRMAN, CEO, NOVELLUS SYSTEMS, INC.: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for the fourth quarter mid quarter update. Overall the business climate has not changed from the quarter ending call in October. We still see a slight slowing in the U.S. and Asia. Japan is pretty flat and Europe seems to be a little bit slow right now. We don't see anything that we would project as a precipitous decline but as we have reiterate before we did see the fourth quarter being down from the third quarter. Overall on our products, our Tungsten product still doing very well, PECVD is still strong, our HDP product line seems to be improving, PVD is gaining strength, Electrofill is solid, our surface integrity group is holding their own and our CMP has gained some momentum but again as we said before we won't see this business materialize significantly until the second half of next year. Our guidance mid quarter update guidance is going to be on bookings, from 325 million to 330 million, which is on the high-end of the range we had given at the end of the third quarter. Shipments are looking to be at 330 million which again will be at the high-end of the range. The revenue are expected to be 325 to 330 million, again at the high-end of the range. And net earnings will be between 24 and 26 cents. Which again is at the higher end of the …