How we gonna have a thread if people don't post? I'm seriously
thinking of buying some puts on this puppy. 9x sales is just too much
for a silicon vendor. Can anybody really be buying a this stock at
$50+ when they only sell about $6 per year? I like the Altera tools
more than the Xilinx set, but I haven't tried this summer's latest
from XLNX. The sales reps said that the new tools were a big
improvement. I know that its a lot easier to get high performance
out of a XLX4000 series than a 10K or 6K series. (Better memory,
better routing, higher pin-stability, more natural placement, more
cell topology options, easier to tweak, better timing tools). Sure
their sales are up. So are engineering jobs.
And right now is the best time I have ever seen for EEs. Most
of my buddies are working multiple jobs. You can get a job if you
just have a body temperature warmer than room, and can spell
"NAND". I don't think this can last. And when its over, who is going
to be consuming all those programmable parts?
I suspect this stock and XLNX are good mirrors for the state of
the EE profession. When times are good, engineers are hired to
develop new products. When times aren't companies don't want
to design new products, instead they just cost-reduce the ones
they already got. And when you cost reduce a product, the first
thing that gets ripped out are the high margin PLDs. You might
be able to leave some of the popcorn in, but all those $200 parts
that XLNX and ALTR ship are going to go.
So how about some comments? Any other users out there? Would
you buy this stock at its current multiples?
At least say "hi!", its getting too lonely lurking on this thread while
that D@mn Altera compiler works away in the background.
-- Carl |
