Dan Skovel at Fahnestock (courtesy Albert):
On Copper Fab30 Yields:
"AMD: BUY. (NYSE, 53 15/16 -1 1/16): Management Meeting: Management expects to ship hundreds of thousands of the new high-performance 900MHz/950MHz/1GHz Athlons 2Q2000, but only a limited quantity this quarter/month to Compaq (NYSE, CPQ 26 3/4) and Gateway (NYSE, GTW 63 1/4). Its performance visibility currently ranges as far as 2GHz by the end of 2001. The Dresden Fab 30 production ramp of Athlon is doing well: 0.18-micron copper interconnect process is working fine, yields are excellent and management believes its speed distribution is very competitive with Intel."
Future business plans including Dresden "sharing":
"AMD has no plans to pursue a Timna-type integrated microprocessor and graphics device. The flash memory business remains very hot and capacity expansion plans are on-track. AMD has never been a supplier to Ericsson (OTC, ERICY 102 29/64) and has no plans to enter the mass data storage flash market at this time-it has a NAND-type device, but is not attracted to the expected cost-driven economics of the segment. Management would not comment on the Microsoft Xbox (OTC, MSFT 95 9/16) game project expected to be announced tomorrow, other than admit AMD is one of two bidders. Plans to engage with a partner to share capacity and costs of the new Fab 30 in Dresden are being re-evaluated. Simply put, the company is significantly more confident it will fully utilize the facility as it ramps over the 18 months beginning 2Q2000 than it was last year when the plan was hatched.
The communications business is not part of AMD's long-term strategy and will likely be restructured in some way (sold, spun-off, merged or other). In the mean time, it is growing by 25% and very profitable. We believe the outlook for the Athlon has improved with diminishing manufacturing risks, and the company is well positioned to compete with Intel over the next several quarters. We expect to revise our earnings estimates upward over the next few days." |
