Robert Maire Quotations

Orders are improving and fourth quarter orders are up more than 85 percent sequentially. According to management, order timing should continue to improve and revenue levels for global sales are expected to increase for the fourth quarter.

That was a monstrous increase - even for this company.

We would suggest that this disappointing number will likely disprove the view that the worst is behind us. It is clear that we blew through what was ours and the industry's previous expectations and it is difficult to imagine exactly how much lower we can go from here.

Expectations are that the semiconductor industry continues to expand despite the normal historical summer seasonality. Annual revenue growth for the industry could be up to 40 percent.

FEI reported a bad end to a bad year. The only positive part was the fact that business was improving in terms of orders and revenue. The problem is that FEI needs to find a way to get it to the bottom line.

I'm sure the company feels embarrassed that they cut guidance so far only to have things reverse themselves less than a month later.

It leads one to wonder how reliable the projections and guidance from management are. Here, it was a positive incident in that the reality came in better than the projection. But let's say the opposite were true and reality came in well under predictions. People would be more upset.