Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). The first question comes from Krish Sankar from Banc of America. Please go ahead, sir.
Krish Sankar - Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch
One, in terms of the dynamics you’re seeing going forward beyond 4Q, can you just elaborate if you still see semiconductors being the big driver or do you see flat panel, other segments come back too?
Leo Berlinghieri
Well Krish, since semiconductor is still a big piece of the total business, that would have the biggest impact, but we would expect also that flat panel displays seem to be stronger, LEDs seem to be strong right now.
Depending on how solar goes, it may recover a bit from where it was since it's been down about 50% compared to last year. I think semiconductor would likely be as it was in the past quarter or two, the main drivers, but the other pieces of the business, it’s a smaller percentage but if we saw the same kind of growth it certainly would influence it.
Krish Sankar - Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch
The step-up in OpEx from Q3 to Q4, does it include all the temporary costs or how did you model it going forward, are there temporary costs that’s going to start coming in through 2010?
Leo Berlinghieri
As I said the step-up in the fourth quarter represents the majority of curtailing the temporary costs. And as I mentioned to you, we have said on previous calls that that after restoring all our temporary reductions and so forth our breakeven could range around in the $114 million range.
Looking into next year, we expect that, we would keep operating expenses relatively steady, ranging in that $42 million to $44 million range with a breakeven maybe in the $114 million to $118 million range. And looking to next year’s possibility that we make some future investment in R&D or some other projects, so that's just a general idea of what we look at going forward.
Krish Sankar - Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch
On the LED said, the main product you guys sell to the LED equipment basis mostly on flow controller side, can you actually quantify what would be a third available market for MKS?
Leo Berlinghieri
Certainly there are a large number of flow controllers on the LED tools. But in addition to that most of the vacuum products that we sell, the process manometers we sell our Baratron throttle closed-loop pressure control, the throttle valves, the vacuum lines out of the HPS group and heaters, primarily around the vacuum products. But it's more than just the flow controllers.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
