From this morning's WSJ, buried in an article about retail sales and the CPI report. "Separatly, the latest survey by the National Federation of Independent Business... Similarly, through the first eight weeks of the fourth quarter, the percentage of companies planning to increase capital spending has climbed to 37%, near the record of 41%."
This is good news for Intel, as the percentage of capital spending that goes to machinery and plant is steadily decreasing while the percentage that goes to IT is steadily increasing.
JMHO:
Intel's stock price has under-performed recently due to concerns about the current quarter. Regardless of what they report on January 11th, pennies short or pennies ahead, there are several factors that will lead to increased expectations for 2000:
- Pent up demand from companies that had Y2K purchase freeze
- Windows 2000 release in February
- Slow but steady increase in hype about ITanium
- Hype over 1G processor (hope the Intel's marketing and PR departments are wide awake on this one, to those of us who follow this stuff it's not that big a deal, but it could be made into a real media event & milestone for the general public if handled correctly)
- Continued build out of the Internet and subsequent server demand
- Reduced manufacturing costs with transition to .18; steadily increasing gross margin
- <feel welcome to add to this list>
MHO, Intel will out-perform the market over the next year, and is a great buy at these prices.
John |
