The market is still searching for the future course of Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) as it trades in the range of $19.50-$20.50 for an entire week. The stock had crashed down from $21.80 last Monday with a big gap but the following sessions failed to fill the gap, suggesting continued weakness. In the last 5 years, this has been the first instance of weekly closing with such a huge gap which points towards a fundamental change on a structural basis.
The story of a merger between Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) and Tokyo Electron Ltd. was first proposes in September 2013 but that has now been dispelled. The joint decision to terminate the merger announced by both the companies led the crash in price last week. According to the US Department of Justice, competition lost from the merger wouldn’t be replaced to the proper degree by the companies’ coordinated remedy proposal and that led to the conclusion of no realistic prospect for the completion of the merger.
The market was disappointed as the merger would be very helpful for accelerating the company’s business strategy. Still Gary Dickerson, the CEO of the company claims that the existing growth strategy is compelling. The company expects that the announcement of a new share repurchase program up to $3 billion in buybacks over the next 3 years would repair the market sentiment somehow.
Technically, that hope doesn’t look to be fulfilled anytime soon as the price consolidates in a narrow range instead of any attempt to recover the losses. The severity of the selloff last Monday can be understood from the volume of 218 million against the daily average of 32 million only, the highest in the last 5 years. This type of damage takes a lot of time to repair and if the final support around $19 fails to provide adequate support, the bears can rule for a long time.
