Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Raj Seth - Cowen and Company.
Raj Seth - Cowen and Company
Aart, I may have missed this; I got on late. Did you make any comment about how fiscal Q2 bookings came in and can you talk a little bit about whether or not - I know the environment still is tough - but have you seen a material change from last quarter or the same general environment?
Aart de Geus
Okay, it's a complex question because let me start with the same general environment. I would argue that the general environment has not fundamentally changed with the exception of obviously many of the semiconductor companies seeing some, quote, "bounce," off the bottom, which was first was attributed to inventory that has to be replenished, now is being viewed as really the market trying to find a little bit more stable state and that stable state is not minus 38%, which is where it was a quarter ago, but is more likely to end up in the minus 20% state or so for the year.
And so in that sense the free fall is over for right now unless there's another major economic disturbance and people are really starting to look forward to where is the industry now going and how long will the recovery be. And in general the scenarios that I hear - and [inaudible] the one that we use from a management point of view - is to just assume that it will then take probably a couple of years to come back to the levels that it used to be in the middle of '08, let's say.
Within that we have clearly seen that we actually had a very good quarter. Overall as we look at the entire year, we communicated that we think that our bookings will be slightly below what we had planned, but [inaudible] as the plans were, you know, done in mid '08 so there's a lot of changes there.
And, by the way, the bookings themselves are less relevant as maybe the run rate, which is slightly down going forward. And that is also moderated by the fact that there's just been a few bankruptcies, a few people that are just very cautious right now.
If I were to summarize it, we actually feel that we are in an extraordinarily strong position as a company and that the magnitude of the recession is very deep and that it's only now that many companies are planning how are they going to behave and restructure the industry going forward. And in that situation I think we're in a very good position, but we are well aware that many companies are still very stressed.
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