[Landis Interview (found on Yahoo! DMIC thread)]
Landis long-term pix: WIND, DMIC, NSIL Giledain
7/27/00 6:55 pm
(From CNN)
Kevin Landis, portfolio manager at Firsthand Funds,
joins us now in San Francisco.
Kevin, welcome back.
KEVIN LANDIS, FIRSTHAND FUNDS: Thanks. Good to be back.
BAY: So explain this "volatility can be your friend"
theory to us, please.
LANDIS: Well, if you're investing with an eye toward the
stocks you ought to own for '01 and '02, then -- and you're
in no particular hurry to get your trades filled today at
this price, a market like this gives you the chance to be
disciplined and hold out for what you think is an attainable
price.
BAY: So you look for a lower price, although you wouldn't
call these low prices?
LANDIS: No, no. I'd say you can get a better entry point
given that the market seems to want to trade back and forth.
Now, markets being what they are, as soon as we say this,
watch, it will go into a nice long-term upturn, but that
wouldn't be so bad either.
BAY: You brought us some of your top picks tonight. Let's go
through them, but first, they're your top picks for future
performance, not necessarily for how they performed this
year. Is that correct?
LANDIS: Right. We had a few ego charts that we could have
thrown up there -- stocks (UNINTELLIGIBLE) done really,
really well. But I tried to pick a few that haven't really
had their best moves yet.
BAY: OK. Let's take a look at Wind River Systems. It's down
12 1/2 percent year-to-date. It's well off its 52-week high.
So at this price, is this a good time to buy it?
LANDIS: I think this is -- this is a good year to start
accumulating Wind River, but this is a stock that we're
probably going to own for years. And this company makes all
the operating systems that you don't see. You're familiar
with the operating system on your computer and maybe you're
familiar with the operating system on your cell phone, but I
bet you're not aware of the operating system that runs the
elevator in your building or the climate control or any of
the other embedded systems that surround you.
BAY: All right. Let's take a look at Digital Microwave. It's
a wireless infrastructure provider. Now, obviously, the
wireless sector is hot, but why this stock?
LANDIS: Well, what's great about this stock is it's one of
these great unknown invisible companies, and it's an example
of how we'll take a a trend that we really like, but dig in
and find sort of a less famous name.
The only time you think of a radio company like Digital
Microwave is when you can't get a signal on your cell phone,
and you begin to wonder why. And the answer is that they
haven't bought enough radios from Digital Microwave to build
out their network yet.
BAY: OK, and those two are in your top holdings in your
value fund, but NetSilicon is not.
LANDIS: Right. Well, NetSilicon is a smaller company. We
also own a little bit of NetSilicon in our communications
and in our innovators fund. This is a communications chip
company, but it's a communications chip company with a
little bit of a twist.
The Internet is not just about hooking all the computers
together; it's also about hooking together your printers and
your copiers and maybe even your refrigerator. And that's
the market that NetSilicon serves. And it's not that
obvious, not that sexy, but it's a great market for this
company.
BAY: Kevin Landis, thanks for sharing your top picks
with us tonight.
LANDIS: Thank you. |
