The world's biggest chip equipment vendor, Applied Materials, this afternoon reported fiscal Q2 revenue and profit that topped Wall Street's expectations, and forecast revenue this quarter as much as six hundred million dollars higher than consensus.

The report sent Applied's shares slightly higher in late trading.

CEO and founder Gary Dickerson remarked, "Applied Materials' record performance is underpinned by broad-based strength across our semiconductor businesses,"

Added Dickerson, "We are confident in our ability to outperform our markets as large, secular trends create sustainable demand for semiconductors and our leadership in materials engineering becomes increasingly critical to deliver new chip technologies."

During a conference call with analysts follow the report, Dickerson said the world may have to re-think the "just in time" approach to manufacturing.

"Current capacity shortfalls and some areas of the market show the highly efficient just in time supply chains that have served the semiconductor industry well for the past 2 decades may not be the most effective strategy going forward," said Dickerson.

Revenue in the three months ended in April rose 41%, year over year, to $5.58 billion, yielding a net profit of $1.63 a share.

Analysts had been modeling $5.4 billion and $1.51 per share.

Applied said its gross profit margin jumped 3.1 percentage points, year over year, to 47.7%.

For the current quarter, the company sees revenue of $5.72 billion to $6.12 billion, and EPS in a range of $1.70 cents to $1.82. That compares to consensus for $5.52 billion and a $1.55 per share.

By: DocMemory
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