Piper Jaffray Reiterates Overweight, $15 PT on Applied Materials

In a research note, Piper Jaffray maintains its Overweight rating and $15 price target on Applied Materials, Inc. AMAT as Oct. 2011 previews inflection in core Silicon Systems and weak Solar displays. Piper Jaffray comments, “We expect AMAT's core business unit - silicon system revenues (~50% of total) to be down -25% q/q to $1,049m, which is in alignment with recent earnings from peer group companies as push outs by foundries (Global Foundries, SMIC) and Memory (Hynix) were key drivers for this segment's weakness. We estimate overall orders for Oct'11 to be down ~25% q/q to $1,792m with silicon system orders down by ~50% from its peak of $1,715m. We believe orders in the solar segment (~12% of the total) declined -35% q/q.” AMAT closed at $12.64 per share on Tuesday.