Carl Mehr: "I believe that Paul Engel have seen the light! ... As the Inner Circle proceeds to take the company "private" by their looting, Tim May may cross over. ...Sorry for the long time it took me."
On what do you base this outrageous claim, that Paul Engel has joined the anti-Intel crusade of yourself, Kapkan, Dan3, and others?
I spoke to Paul only yesterday (about my new iMac mostly) and he said nothing similar to what you've been raving about for the past couple of weeks. Do you have actual evidence of your claim?
It's weird to see you only just now, in the past few weeks, discovering that Intel executives get large stock options. Duh. Who'd've thunk it?
Options have been listed in the 10K and 10Q filings and suchlike for at least the past 30 years of Intel's public trading. And for the past 4 or 5 years the "Insider" page on Yahoo Stocks has had detailed filings covering the previous 1-2 years.
Am I surprised that "Jane Shaw" and "David Pottruck" get options of 30,000 shares a year, more or less? No. (Correcting backward for splits, this is around the 2500-3000 shares per year that I remember directors getting some years ago.)
Do I support all specific employees? I no longer keep close enough track to be able to judge. I do know that Noyce, Moore, Grove, Parker, Barrett, and so on were amongst the best scientists and managers I have seen, judging from comparative analyses of managers at other companies. And the world seems to think much the same. (They were/are very bright as well, and I've known a lot of very bright people in my life, including Richard Feynman, Jim Hartle, and a lot of my genius friends.)
Do I wish the stock price was higher? Of course. And I expect that within the next 2-3 years it will be higher, as the next expansion phase happens and as Intel benefits from having invested over the past 2 years while others were frightened out of expansion.
Do I think Intel managers are doing a good job? Yes. I think Intel is very well-prepared, with fabs and designs, for the coming upturn. Much better prepared than is AMD...or any of the Japanese companies. Even the Taiwanese and Korean companies have been slacking off in cutting-edge investment, leaving Intel and IBM and a few others to be fully-prepared for 90 nm/300 mm/SOI technologies. Intel will have several $2 billion fabs running this process just at the time it is needed.
"Running on all cylinders."
Trashing Intel management based on not having avoided the Tech Wreck of the past 3 years is silly. (The Tech Wreck was the hangover from the spending spree of the entire industry in 1998-99 (the run-up to Y2K, in my opinion, as companies replaced most of their old PCs.)
Trashing Intel Capital for not having forseen the collapse--when essentially no investors saw it either!!--is also silly. In 1999-2000 the telecoms and optical companies were riding high. I'll bet we could find many posts right here in SI Intel exhorting Intel to get into these hot areas. I recall a lot of folks talking about how Intel should consider merging with Broadcom, the then-high-flying optical company. And one could not watch an hour of CNBC without seeing numerous mentions of JDS Uniphase, Sienna, Broadcom, Cisco, Qualcomm, Commerce One, Juniper, and a dozen other high-fliers.
I recall you, Carl, relishing the booming stock price of Cisco.
Your trashing of Intel--and I must presume also of Cisco, which used and still uses the same kind of stock options--is unseemly and petty.
But I am happy for you that the Droids have embraced you and your trashing of the Evil Intel with such enthusiasm. You have found yourself a new family.
--Tim May |
