Actel moved in lock step with a general semiconductor slaughter led mostly by the Lattice announcement, specifically that sales would be 8-10% lower THAN YR AGO PERIOD. By contrast the Altera debacle of a couple weeks ago was a projection of 15% SEQUENTIAL downturn in revenues. From what I can see, Actel hasn't hedged a bit on their guidance to Wall Street of sequential growth in the "hi single digits." The slaughter yesterday, in my opinion, created buying opportunties.
Semis with bad news to report for Q2 by and large have preannounced the bad news by now, so the earnings reports of July should not produce surprises. How they all behave in their conference calls will dictate how the stocks fair in July. Historically, the semiconductor companies have been conservative in their July guidance, siting summer doldrums, the european holidays, etc. As the summer rolls on, the stocks tend to firm with Q4 backlog visibility, and continue to go up thru the winter. This of course assumes no major cyclical downturn - a highly unlikely scenario.
-tt |
