From Briefing.com: Updated: 04-Mar-03 - General Commentary - For the first two months of the year, the tech heavy Nasdaq has shown surprising resilience. Index is actually fractionally higher over that period compared to modest declines for the blue chip indices. What's surprising about the sector's relative strength is that it has come at a time when the underlying fundamental's have shown little to no improvement.
So why the strength? We have argued in recent days that one explanation for the sector's relative outperformance is that sellers have been washed out of many first, second and third tier names such as Lucent, Corning, PMC-Sierra, Ciena, Sycamore Networks, etc. Consequently, little selling pressure left to drive share prices much lower. And in some of these stocks, prices have become so low as to encourage long-term bargain hunting.
Where this argument generally doesn't hold up - and where the risk remains to the Nasdaq - is in the large-cap leadership issues such as Cisco (CSCO), Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), Applied Materials (AMAT), Qualcomm (QCOM), etc. These stocks are still widely held and remain most vulnerable to economic, geopolitical and valuation concerns.
Not surprisingly, it was these stocks which led the sector broadly lower in Monday's action. With many still locked in bear trends, it's too early to get excited about the Nasdaq's outperformance. Briefing.com still advising a cautious tone to the market, and to tech.
Robert Walberg
4:13PM Fairchild Semi issues Q1 revenue guidance; warns of weaker margins (FCS) 11.67 -0.49: Company sees Q1 revenues tracking slightly ahead of projections provided in Q4 conf call, when management called for Q1 revs to be flat to down 5% sequentially. FCS now sees Q1 revs flat to down 3% sequentially, implying revenues of $343-354 mln vs Multex consensus of $344.77 mln. However, co now sees gross margins below previous guidance. If recent trend of higher bookings continues, co would expect to guide higher margins and revenues for Q2.
4:01PM QLogic competitor Vixel files patent infringement action (QLGC) 34.90 -0.51: The complaint states that QLogic is infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,118,776, entitled "Methods and Apparatus for Fiber Channel Interconnection of Private Loop Devices," through the unauthorized manufacture, use, sale and offering for sale of various storage area network switching products, including QLogic's SANBox2 product.
2:41PM Sector Watch: Semiconductor : This sector helped pace the way higher during the Feb recovery and is leading the way lower today. The weakest components of the index (SOX 286 -3.8%) on a percentage basis today are: MU -8.5%, MXIM -5.6%, NSM -5.4%, TER -4%, ALTR -4.3%, LLTC -4.1% and XLNX -4.4%. SOX index testing support in the 286/285 area with the next floor at 280. Supports for the Semi HOLDRS are at 22.54/22.48 and 22.12.
2:11PM Integrated Circuit -- Daily Breakout (ICST) 23.77 -0.09: Shares of Integrated Circuit are holding towards 52-week highs. The $1.6 bln market-cap company makes a broad line of timing products for use in PC motherboards and peripheral applications. It also makes silicon-timing devices for non-PC motherboard applications, such as digital videodisk players. ICST is projected to earn $0.88 this yr (p/e 27.3) and EPS is projected to grow 22% next yr to $1.07 (p/e 22.4).
11:17AM National Semi (NSM) 16.78 -0.35: JMP Securities downgrades Strong Buy to MKT OUTPERFORM. Target $20. After 35% gain over last couple of weeks, firm believes most of near term upside potential has been achieved.
11:14AM Texas Instruments (TXN) 16.65 -0.10: JMP Securities downgrades Mkt Outperform to MKT PERFORM. On longer-term competitive concerns, stock approaching firm's previous $18 target price
9:29AM Xilinx seen raising rev guidance slightly (XLNX) 23.03 +0.13: Previewing tomorrow's business update meeting, Lehman analyst Dan Niles believes XLNX will raise revenue growth forecast to a range of about 2-4% from forecast of 1-4%. Believes this will signal positive trends without raising the bar much.
9:00AM Semiconductor data below expectations -- UBS : According to UBS, January SIA results were below expectations. Says January kicked off the year with a below-expectation performance, despite some relatively good news coming from various Asian sources surrounding Chinese New Year. With the exception of Flash and SRAM, most other categories were down m/m in significant double digits. Blended IC ASPs were not as weak as expected. Firm is expecting February to show a mild sequential increase, followed by a stronger March.
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