​Shares of Applied Materials fall on weak earnings Continue reading...

At the end of February we announced the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we predicted that the market will decline by at least 20% in (Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW). In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each […]

Last week, you might have seen that Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) released its second-quarter result to the...

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s easy to ban a product that’s difficult to get your hands on anyway.That’s why Britain’s possible move to impose a stricter ban on Huawei Technologies Co. seems opportunistic, even if it does now make sense. It’s taking advantage of harsher U.S. sanctions on the Chinese telecoms-equipment giant to consider extending the U.K.’s halfway measures unveiled with great fanfare in January. A final decision will come after the government’s National Cyber Security Centre reviews implications for the security of the country’s phone networks.Earlier this month, the U.S. imposed more stringent guidelines on Huawei, restricting any firm that uses American equipment from selling to the Chinese technology company without its approval. That means Huawei won’t be able to get chips from companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. because they’re likely made using machines from firms such as California-based Applied Materials Inc. So Huawei may effectively find itself cut off from access to the high-tech silicon it needs for its networking gear. This provides a convenient excuse for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government to revisit its more nuanced approach with regards to Huawei, which provoked U.S. ire in the midst of efforts to strike a new Anglo-American trade pact and a rebellion from a group of Conservative lawmakers.Initially, in a break with the U.S., the U.K. had decided to retain some access to Huawei’s products for its carriers’ rollout of fiber-optic and fifth-generation mobile networks. It proposed capping the Chinese company’s share to 35% of non-sensitive parts of a mobile network in order to keep operators from being reliant on a Nordic duopoly of Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj. Now ministers are drawing up proposals to reduce that share to zero.The irony is that, given the recent U.S. measures, Huawei may find it very difficult to keep competing for orders. The company probably won’t be able to buy many of the chip sets it needs to make things such as wireless base stations. The quality of those products will suffer as it’s forced to seek out new suppliers, likely in China itself, where semiconductor technology is still playing catch-up. That could make carriers rethink who supplies their 5G equipment even before any national ban kicks in, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anthea Lai.Even though a ban on new Huawei gear might now be easier, the question of how to handle the existing networks is not. Huawei’s equipment currently accounts for two-thirds of BT Group Plc’s mobile network, and one-third of Vodafone Group Plc’s U.K. mobile network, according to UBS Group AG analyst Polo Tang. BT has already said that swapping the kit out would cost it 500 million pounds ($615 million) over the next five years. Reducing it to zero could double that expense, Tang said.The U.K.’s previous 35% limit applied to an operator’s overall network, but forcing operators to replace any already installed Huawei gear would strain capital requirements and jeopardize ambitious goals for new network build-out — Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he wants the whole country to have access to gigabit internet speeds by 2025. It seems that the government is taking that into account. The Times of London reported that the new proposals would only prohibit the purchase and installation of new equipment from 2023.Which serves to underline how opportunistic the new review looks. The main argument for letting carriers continue to use Huawei was to ensure that network investment continued apace. Now that the U.S. crackdown looks likely to reduce the quality and availability of Huawei products, it’s a chance for the government to assuage both rebellious lawmakers and critics across the Atlantic. And with global antipathy toward China rising over its handling of the Covid-19 outbreak and crackdown in Hong Kong, there’s now little point in further testing the straining U.S. alliance.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Alex Webb is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe's technology, media and communications industries. He previously covered Apple and other technology companies for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Here at Zacks, our focus is on the proven Zacks Rank system, which emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find great stocks. Nevertheless, we are always paying attention to the latest value, growth, and momentum trends to underscore strong picks.

Applied Materials (AMAT) possesses solid growth attributes, which could help it handily outperform the market.

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Apple, Taiwan Semiconductor, Applied Materials, KLA and Lam Research

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 18, 2020 -- Applied Materials, Inc. today announced that Gary Dickerson, President and CEO, and Dan Durn, Senior Vice President and CFO, will.

Jim Cramer discusses the stock market today including stocks to watch this week, buying Applied Materials stock and Taiwan Semiconductor stock.

Companies In The News Are: AMAT, NEWR, SSRM, GLOB.

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 rose above 87,000 on Saturday, as new outbreaks were reported from states where stay-at-home orders are set to expire and in states that never imposed them, raising concerns that the reopening of economies will spur new infections.

A lot has changed since Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) kicked off its 2020 fiscal year with a rebound in sales after a U.S.-China trade war and memory chip market slump the year prior. This time around, it's COVID-19 that is proving to be a headwind for the company. In spite of question marks, shares are an even better value now than a few months ago after the company turned in another quarter of solid growth.

Barron’s screened for stocks in the S&P 500 that exhibit characteristics of value stocks—namely, they still look cheap—but that have the growth attributes of faster-than average forecasted profit gains.

Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) had to pull its quarterly guidance in March, as the novel coronavirus outbreak disrupted tech supply chains thanks to shelter-in-place orders and lockdowns initiated across the globe to contain the spread. The company said that COVID-19 created substantial challenges across its "supply chain, manufacturing operations and logistics," erasing nearly $650 million in potential sales in its semiconductor systems business during the quarter. Despite these challenges, Applied Materials put up a solid performance and also met its dividend commitments at a time when several big names have been reducing or suspending payouts.

(Bloomberg) -- Since its founding more than three decades ago, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has built its business by working behind the scenes to make customers like Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. shine. Now the low-profile chipmaker has landed squarely in the middle of the U.S.-China trade war, an incalculably valuable asset that both sides are vying to control.The Trump administration opened up a new front in the conflict on Friday by barring any chipmaker using American equipment from supplying China’s Huawei Technologies Co. without U.S. government approval. That means TSMC and rivals will have to cut off Huawei unless they get waivers from the U.S. Commerce Dept. TSMC has already stopped accepting new orders from Huawei, the Nikkei newspaper reported Monday.The move threatens to wreak havoc throughout the complex ecosystem that produces technology for consumers and companies around the world. An attack on Huawei threatens not just its workers and its standing as a world leader in making smartphones and telecom equipment, but also hundreds of suppliers. The Chinese government has vowed to protect its national champion, with threats of retribution against U.S. companies that depend on China like Apple Inc. and Boeing Co.“China likely will retaliate, and investors should brace themselves for a possible trade war escalation,” Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analysts led by Mark Li wrote in a research note on Friday.Read more: U.S. Tightens Rules to Crack Down on Huawei’s Chip Supply Huawei suppliers across Asia fell on Monday, with AAC Technologies Holdings Inc., Q Technology Group Co., Sunwoda Electronic and Lens Technology all sliding 5% or more. TSMC, which gets an estimated 14% of its revenue from Huawei, dropped as much as 2.5%.The U.S. already blacklisted Huawei last year, preventing American companies from supplying the Chinese company unless they got a license. The latest move tightens those restrictions to prevent chipmakers -- American or foreign -- from working with Huawei and its secretive chip-design unit HiSilicon on the cutting-edge semiconductors they need to make smartphones and communications equipment. The Trump administration sees Huawei as a dire security threat, an allegation the company denies.“We must amend our rules exploited by Huawei and HiSilicon and prevent U.S. technologies from enabling malign activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a tweet.Huawei countered by accusing the U.S. of ulterior motives.“The so-called cybersecurity reasons are merely an excuse,” Richard Yu, head of the Chinese tech giant’s consumer electronics unit wrote in a post to his account on messaging app WeChat. “The key is the threat to the technology hegemony of the U.S” posed by Huawei, he added.The U.S. decision is likely to hurt not just Huawei and TSMC, but also a clutch of American players including gear-makers Applied Materials Inc., KLA and Lam Research Corp. themselves, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote. Disruptions to Huawei’s production will also hurt U.S. customers from Micron Technology Inc. and Qorvo Inc. to Texas Instruments Inc., they said. But “it bears repeating that any escalation of trade tensions is negative for the stocks overall,” they wrote in a research report.It would have been impossible to imagine TSMC becoming such a coveted chit between the world’s great powers when it was founded in 1987. Morris Chang, born in China and trained in the U.S., started the company as a so-called foundry, manufacturing semiconductors for any customer that didn’t want to construct its own fabrication facility, or fab.At the time, the business wasn’t nearly as glamorous as making chips yourself. Dominating the industry at the time were companies like Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which made processors for personal computers. “Real men have fabs,” AMD co-founder Jerry Sanders would say, making clear that was an insult.But in the intervening years, the foundry industry has become far more strategic for the technology industry. Customers from Apple and Huawei to Qualcomm and Nvidia Corp. have found they can innovate more quickly if they focus on chip designs and then turn to foundries like TSMC to produce them. Innovators in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence or the internet of things also depend on foundries to crack open new markets.Today, many of the chips for mobile phones, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and any other key technology are made at foundries. TSMC has become the leading foundry in the world by investing heavily in ever more advanced fabs, with annual capital spending of about $16 billion this year.It can now manufacture at 5 nanometers, about twice the width of human DNA, while China’s top foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, is at 14 nanometers. That makes TSMC’s chips far more powerful and energy efficient.Huawei and HiSilicon will have few good options if they are cut off from TSMC. One possibility is to procure off-the-shelf chips from Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc. and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co., an option Huawei’s rotating Chairman Eric Xu mentioned in late March. But even that may no longer be viable under the new Commerce restrictions.SMIC itself is keen on moving up the technology ladder, eyeing a secondary share listing that could raise more than $3 billion on top of a large capital infusion from the state.Read more: China Injects $2.2 Billion Into Local Chip Firm Amid U.S. CurbsBut that’s a longer-term endeavor and Huawei’s products meanwhile are likely to suffer, putting them at risk of falling behind those of rivals like Apple or Xiaomi Corp.For TSMC, it’s growing ever more difficult to remain neutral amid the growing tensions between the U.S. and China. The company brands itself “everybody’s foundry,” effectively the Switzerland of the tech industry. It supplies Chinese customers like Huawei and the American military, while relying on U.S. producers of semiconductor-making equipment like Applied Materials and Lam Research.TSMC did take one step closer to the U.S. last week, saying it would build a $12 billion chip plant in Arizona. The Department of Defense has expressed concern that overseas fabs may be vulnerable to cyberattacks and domestic manufacturing would assure a more reliable supply of chips.The proposal appears to be carefully calculated to address such security issues without too much damage to profits or its political balancing act. Suppliers to the military, such as Xilinx Inc., would be able to use the U.S. fab, but the facility would likely account for less than 5% of revenue so margins won’t be compromised.It’s not clear if the plans for a U.S. plant will win TSMC leniency in supplying Huawei, however.“TSMC will not be granted or granted a license based on their intent to build a 5 nanometer fab here in the United States. That’s not part of it at all,” Keith Krach, undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment at the State Department, told reporters on a call. “There’s no assurance on that and we don’t anticipate that.”Meanwhile, China appears to be preparing to retaliate for the new restrictions on Huawei. On Friday, the Global Times -- a Chinese tabloid run by the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party -- reported Beijing was ready to initiate countermeasures, including imposing restrictions on Apple, suspending the purchase of Boeing airplanes and putting U.S. companies on an ‘unreliable entity list.’The list will cover “foreign entities that cause actual or potential damage to Chinese companies and industries,” the newspaper said.(Updates with Nikkei report in second paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 26, 2020 -- Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) today announced the pricing of senior unsecured notes in an aggregate principal amount of $1.5.

Moody's Investors Service, ("Moody's") assigned an A3 senior unsecured rating to Applied Materials Inc. ("Applied")'s proposed debt offering. For provisional ratings, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the provisional rating assigned, and in relation to a definitive rating that may be assigned subsequent to the final issuance of the debt, in each case where the transaction structure and terms have not changed prior to the assignment of the definitive rating in a manner that would have affected the rating.

Buy Applied Materials on weakness to the 200-week SMA at $44.69 and reduce holdings on strength to its 200-day SMA at $54.04.

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down some of the features of the Yahoo Finance Premium package.

Q2 2020 Applied Materials Inc Earnings Call