Mark, here's a stock we both like. I thought this might interest you.
Sorry for having to send the whole article instead of just a link. For some reason I can't get a link to the actual article.
>January 19, 2000
Brent Little has a phrase to describe the pace of business these days at the Sorrento Valley headquarters of Applied Micro Circuits Corp.
The vice president of marketing says AMCC is racing to "stay ahead of that tsunami that's coming in telecommunications."
To stay in the race, AMCC raised more than $745 million through a secondary stock offering last week to bankroll potential acquisitions and to expand its operations in various ways.
The company also plans to break ground today on a new engineering design facility, part of AMCC's bid to expand its ability to design new integrated circuits.
"We've already been hiring at a pretty good clip," Little said yesterday. "I think over the next five quarters, we're going to bring on another 180 people."
The demand for AMCC's specialized high-performance communications chips already has fueled extraordinary growth. For the nine months ended in December, AMCC's revenue increased more than 76 percent to $115.3 million.
An even bigger wave is expected, though, as ever-faster modems deliver a dramatic increase in the telecommunications pipelines that deliver TV programs and Internet service to homes and business.
About 83 percent of AMCC's current revenue is derived from specialized communications chips the company makes at its factory, or "fab," in San Diego. The company also uses contract manufacturers, including IBM and Advanced Micro Systems of Pocatello, Idaho.
AMCC is devoting most of its current resources, however, into designing and developing the next generation of specialized integrated circuits, Little said.
Wall Street's fervor to catch the next big wave is so high that AMCC now has a market valuation of almost $9 billion -- based on yesterday's closing price of $145.061/4.
Based on the market valuation alone, AMCC now ranks behind Qualcomm and Gateway as San Diego's third largest publicly traded company.
"Based on our market cap, we're bigger than Advanced Micro Devices," said William Bendush, AMCC's chief financial officer.
But the Sunnyvale chip maker, with a market valuation of almost $6 billion, has roughly 13,800 employees. AMCC's work force totals 442.
In the secondary offering that closed Jan. 12, AMCC sold 5.25 million shares of its common stock at $142 per share. Little said the new war chest will be used to buy other companies this year, although he would not discuss any specific acquisitions.
"We feel now that we're positioned to compete with some of the bigger companies," said Little, who identified PMC-Sierra and Lucent Microelectronics as AMCC's biggest rivals for now.
Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. |
