I think this stock needs some 'history' behind it. What the other guys are doing, earnings growth included, are exactly what they have been doing the last years. Proven strategy, proven market.
What LSI is doing is all completely new to LSI. Reusable Coreware strategy is new, never made money before. The last Q's 'low' R&D spending is just giving ua a glance of the potential of this strategy. Lots of the product lines are new too - Coreware allows LSI to attack new promising product areas very quickly. But wireless and Drive-on-chip and PSII are just starting to ship, let alone make money. LSI's just beginning to establish it's earning growth history too.
In the last cc one of the analysts tried to pump Wilf to say that because of the beauty of Coreware, the final margins when everything's ramped will be > 45% target that Wilf is aiming for. I agree with the analyst too, but Wilf did not bite. So we'll have to wait for the results at around mid-00 for that one. If you believe that LSI have the right strategy, then in the medium 1 to 2 year run this stock should out-perform the others as people start to recognize this too and the PE start to rise to catch up with its peers.
Short term one week to 2 weeks, I won't worry about it. Take ADI. This year ADI and LSI have tracked each other $ for $ in stock price. But a lot of times there's a 'lag' of 10 days or so.
My guess if by the next cc, LSI will be comfortably above this point. The biggest moves will probably come after the new year when the analysts visit the company to check things out and LSI can tell them the ramp rate of CDMA, PSII and hopefully drive-on-chip. We won't hear about any details, the stock will just go up . Count ourselves lucky if some analysts even bother to re-iterate another buy with the same re-cycled reasons and no new info.
Boy, would I love to be allowed to wander the cubicles for a couple of days inside LSI .... one insider peek is worth 100 outsider guesses. (ex-duplicate bridge player talk).
patrick |
