Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator's Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Steve O'Rourke of Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.
Steve O'Rourke - Deutsche Bank
Thank you. Good morning. It's an impressive bounceback as well as cost control in the quarter. A question here on how you're seeing the business, can you break down the demand increase you've seen between utilization at your customers and inventory restocking?
William P. Noglows
Steve, I don't think we have that kind of visibility. We think a large portion of the growth we saw in the March and April timeframe was inventory restocking. We believe based on white we've read from certain industry analysts that a lot of that inventory restocking is beginning to slow down and what we're seeing now is just underlying demand and underlying wafer stocks.
But I don't think we can spilt the increase in our demand based on inventory restocking and underlying electronics demand.
Steve O'Rourke - Deutsche Bank
Fair enough. Do you think that the inventory that your customers are holding now are kind of in line with historical norms, that is that part of the puzzle is essentially complete maybe a little bit more through this quarter?
William P. Noglows
Historical norms, I think that's the big question going forward is what is the new norm? And I am not sure we're in a position to discuss what we think the new norm is based on — we don't have any more visibility than many others in our sector have and I think it would be wrong for us to try to predict what the new norm is.
As Bill's comments this morning reflect, we saw a very strong increase in our sales, March, April, May — slowed down a little in June, but continued to increase and we're seeing sort of the same kind of rate in July. September quarter for Cabot Microelectronics is seasonally our strongest quarter so we're optimistic. I was out at SEMICON West last week and although the show was a little depressing, we met with many of our customers there and we describe our customers, if you had talked to them back in the February-March timeframe I would have summarized those discussions as cautious pessimism. I think the discussions we had last week were more of cautious optimism about the future and what the future holds for the second half of the calendar year.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
