Mark,
I'm a sell-side analyst and, while I don't cover MEMC, I do cover the industry and have talked with Sam Duggan a number of times. IRs are often young and inexperienced, which is the case with Sam. They aren't so much professional liers as regurgitators of the "party line." However, with the less experienced ones, you can often get a sense of how business is going by how they answer (or refuse to answer) some of the harder questions. If an IR person sounds flustered or negative/defensive (regardless of what they are saying) its often a good indicator of bad news. Such I found to be the case with Sam over the past week or so. You do have to be careful though. IR types are often not very high in the organization of the company, so you can't be sure of how much they know.
With regards to your last statement, as a rule analysts are not told more because they are analysts. However, they do tend to find out more, because that is their job, and they know how to phrase questions so that they get more information. At least the good ones do. Although, to be honest, I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the Buy side institutions get more info because they, afterall, are the owners. :)
Regards,
Stephen |
