Lam Research Corporation Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-01-28 18:34:12.0

Tags: Board, Lam Research, Call Transcript, Earnings, Question, Corporate Governance, Semiconductors, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Hardware, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of CJ Muse with Barclays Capital. Please go ahead.

CJ Muse - Barclays Capital

Yeah. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. Steve, question here is on the cost cutting side. I know you're going give more details in March, but I guess, if you can't share a targeted breakeven given your call that this downturn is going to persist for another six to eight quarters, can you share what kind of cash burn you are comfortable with given your current strong balance sheet?

Steve Newberry

Well, I think that we have a Board of Directors meeting next week and as I have not had an opportunity to discuss that with the Board, we have not really looked at enough of the specifics of the significant cost reductions that we want to take.

I think it would be premature for me to communicate that, because I think that that will be a decision that I and the management team will present to the Board in terms of what we think it's going to take to be able to make the investments that keep our products and our technology position strong, support our customers effectively and we'll come to a set of decisions with the Board as to what that cash burn is likely to be, and then we will complete the specific cost reductions that will be aligned to that. So, sorry, I can't answer that for you right now.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tim Arcuri with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Tim Arcuri - Citigroup

Hi, Steve. I wanted to ask you a question about maintenance CapEx and kind of how you think about that. I remember Jim used to talk about the fact that there is an upgrade that chip makers have to buy that's kind of every two years, that's basically 10% of the initial tool price. So, that would imply that there's kind of 5% of the dollar installed base that basically has to be turned every year and if you look at the trailing five year dollar installed base, you were about $260 billion and there is some that's come out of that because of capacity shutdowns and things like that so maybe you're at 200 or something a little bit higher than that.

So on that math it would imply that kind of, at a wafer fab level maintenance CapEx is maybe about $10 billion, $10 billion to say $12 billion which is basically where we are to a bit higher even than what you're guiding '09 wafer fab equipment. So, I am wondering how do you think about maintenance and would you agree with those numbers.

 

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