Any company over $1 billion in revenues per annum has been in the firing line, so to speak.

Applied Materials (AMAT) has been top of the target list all this time and though the company has continued to grow and grow, its lack of breakout has become ever more frustrating. An example of this is in the ion implanter market where, according to VLSI Research, it has been trudging along in third position behind Varian and Axcelis, yet little word ever comes from AMAT about how well exactly this product group is competing.

The fact that the company has renamed and re-shuffled product groups every couple of years only makes year-to-year comparison almost impossible.

Now, things are finally changing for the better, though I must say it's only a toe in the tepid waters at this stage, but is definitely a move in the right direction.

What AMAT has stated as part of its fourth quarter financial statements is that due to the acquisition of Applied Films and the subsequent full scale entry into the solar wafer manufacturing equipment market, it would now provide financial breakouts according to four new groupings: Silicon, Fab Solutions, Display, and Adjacent Technologies.

Just so that everyone is on the same page I have copied and pasted what AMAT describes is under the hood for the four new segments,

1. The Silicon segment manufactures and sells equipment to fabricate semiconductor chips.
2.  The Fab Solutions segment offers a broad range of products to maintain, service and optimize customers' semiconductor fabs, including total parts management, spare parts, remanufactured equipment, maintenance agreements, total support programs, and environmental and software solutions.
3. The Display segment manufactures, sells and services equipment used to make flat panel displays.
4. The Adjacent Technologies segment manufactures, sells and services equipment used to fabricate solar photovoltaic cells, flexible electronics and energy-efficient glass.

OK, so we didn't get better transparency in the front-end equipment segment, but I know the breakout in the old ‘service' division is definitely welcome by all those interested.

Adjacent Technologies, which AMAT cites as a key catalyst for the changes, will also help gauge AMAT's momentum in this exciting field going forward, while Display doesn't really give us something new as it's always been there and most analysts have factored this group into models for years.

Anyway, it's a great start and hopefully not an end to greater transparency - well done AMAT.

FYI: Net sales by reportable segment for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006 were: Silicon, $1.61 billion; Fab Solutions, $590 million; Display, $296 million; and Adjacent Technologies, $20 million.