Paul and Thread,
It doesn't appear the this latest stumble is going to effect the stock price to a great degree, we are lucky to be in a period of excellent demand and limited supply. The loss that shareholders will see is an upside opportunity loss, not a significant decline. But as a long term investor with a large portfolio exposure to Intel, I have to take a hard, unbiased look at this investment.
The one thing I am sure of is that Intel can't execute it's business plan at the same level as they could in the past. Is the business plan too aggressive, has the technology reached a level where incremental improvements in performance are very difficult to achieve, does Intel have a management focus problem, has the quality of Intel's employee's declined? I don't know.
Taken alone, the 1.13 GHz recall is a non-issue. But the problems of the past year have become convincing, they are not random or coincidental, they represent a real systemic problem within the company. And the seriousness is magnified when you consider that the same management is embarking on multiple new businesses, and that we have no visibility to the performance of that portion of the business.
At this point, I am thinking I have to reduce my exposure to this company over the remainder of 2000 (I've never sold a share of Intel). Any arguments to the contrary would be appreciated.
John
PS Scumbria, thanks for your heads up on Intel, I'll be paying more attention from now on. |
