JRI, a recent earnings consensus for FY 2001 was $1.52/share. If you exclude the one-time gain from the foundry investment and pro-rate the income taxes accordingly, you get about $1.60 per share for FY2000. That indicates to me that the earlier consensus for 2001 earnings was on the low side, even after taking a pessimistic view of a slowing economy in the first 2 quarters this year. If revenues increase by 30 percent (the low end of estimates by SNDK) for the year, and if margins drop a little, as expected, then it's likely that earnings would grow 20 percent, at the very least. Thus, while I don't find it too useful to estimate earnings, if I were estimating earnings solely from operations and licensing/royalties, I would look for something around $1.90 to $2.00, excluding any one-time gains or extraordinary events. Given other indicators in growth in demand for products that may use flash memory, I would be more comfortable with operating earnings estimates closer to $2.20, but that figure is based on information not discussed at the conference call.
Art |
