From this week's Barrons, an opinion about slackening demand for semiconductor chips:
Samberg: No, but what you are finding
for the first time is that both the corporate buyer and the consumer buyer
is willing to take a slower speed. That's the big change, and the reason
for what's going on at Intel. If you follow these numbers through, sales of
desktop computers priced over $1,000 actually, we believe, declined in the
fourth quarter of 1997, versus the fourth quarter of '96. That is an
enormous thing. Why? No. 1, it's not the paradigm that we are used to. No.
2, the number of associated semiconductor chips that go in those PCs
obviously is not growing as fast as it used to. So you aren't getting the
growth in semiconductors that you were normally used to and you have
oversupply in the Far East. Oversupply and lower demand. Sure, specific
companies can do all right. But that's a huge deal-one not to be messed
with.<br>
Rogers: How much margin compression are
you seeing?<br>
Samberg: I don't know. It is going to be
messy. It might just mean that these guys don't do well for longer, rather
than that their margins get squeezed. But 44% of the semiconductor
companies disappointed in the last quarter they reportedthe one before the
fourth quarter. That number is going to go up. There will be huge earnings
disappointments. |
