Applied Materials Inc. AMAT announced Thursday plans to invest $400 million to build a new engineering center in Bangalore, India that focuses on developing technologies for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The chip equipment maker’s stock slipped 0.4% in premarket trading, putting it in danger of a sixth-straight loss. The company said in the first five years of the center’s operation, the center is expected to support more than $2 billion of planned investments and create at least 500 new jobs, and potentially another 2,500 jobs in the manufacturing ecosystem. “We envision Applied’s strong base of engineering talent collaborating more deeply with domestic and global companies operating in India to strengthen the foundational equipment supply chain serving the global semiconductor manufacturing industry,” said Prabu Raja, President of Applied Materials’ semiconductor products group. The stock has slipped 3.6% over the past five sessions, since closing at a 16-month high on June 13. It has soared 40.4% year to date through Wednesday, while the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX has run up 40.2% and the S&P 500 SPX has advanced 13.7%.
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