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The Daily Trouble (Archive)
Feb 24, 1998
Read-Rite Corp.
(Nasdaq:RDRT - news)
Phone: 408-262-6700
Website: readrite.com
Price (2/23/98): $13 7/8
HOW DID IT FIND TROUBLE?
Reading, writing, and arithmetic may go together, but the numbers just have not been adding up for computer disk drive head
supplier Read-Rite. General chaos in the disk drive industry following turmoil in Asia has led to price-cutting and a rapid
technology transition by key Read-Rite customer Western Digital (NYSE:WDC - news) . As special charges have stacked
up, this head maker has found itself on the chopping block.
The shares started drifting down from the August high of $30 as investors worried that excess inventories at industry bellwether
Seagate (NYSE:SEG - news) meant component suppliers would start feeling price pressures. The October market meltdown
sank the stock below $20, where it's pretty much stayed.
On November 7, Read-Rite echoed sentiments expressed by Western Digital, saying that it would accelerate its transition to
higher performance magnetoresistive (MR) head technology while cutting its production of inductive thin film heads for the 1.3
gigabyte market. This combo meant the firm would miss revenue and earnings estimates for the December quarter and be
forced to take a $30 million charge on its inductive technology.
Then Singapore Technologies announced that its Micropolis subsidiary, one of Read-Rite's minor customers, was being
liquidated. Read-Rite was forced to reserve $15 million to account for receivables, inventories, and other Micropolis-related
exposures.
On January 5, Read-Rite announced that shipments for the last two weeks of December were even weaker than expected,
resulting in first quarter sales of $261 million. That was only slightly above year-ago levels and well below fourth quarter
revenues of $318 million. Plus, the transition to MR was forcing additional charges. Actual results reported January 21 showed
an after-tax charge of $91.8 million and operating earnings of just $0.02 a share.
BUSINESS DESCRIPTION
Read-Rite is the world's largest independent supplier of magnetic recording heads. These heads hover just a microinch above a
computer's hard disk drive platter, reading and writing data. The company designs and manufactures heads as head gimbal
assemblies (HGAs), which include a magnetic recording head attached to a suspension arm and a wire/tubing assembly. Most
HGAs are sold as headstack assemblies (HSAs), a combo of several HGAs (2 to 8) with other third-party components.
Although its products are used mainly in 3.5" disk drives (98% of sales), the company believes it supplies a broader range of
drive products (52 in 1997) than any other independent supplier. On the other hand, its 107 million HGAs sold last year went
to just six customers, with Western Digital, Quantum (Nasdaq:QNTM - news) , and Maxtor accounting for most of its
revenues (51%, 18%, and 13%, respectively versus 43%, 29%, and 12% for FY96).
The shift to higher performance MR head technology should be dramatic. In FY97, Read-Rite sold 24 million MR heads,
increasing MR product sales to $280 million (24% of revenues) from just $34 million the year before. MR products should
account for the majority of sales in FY98.
Competitors include Japanese firms TDK/SAE and Yamaha and U.S. companies such as Applied Magnetics (NYSE:APM
- news) and the internal head operations of drive manufacturers such as Seagate and IBM (NYSE:IBM - news) . In
November, IBM announced that it was expanding its manufacturing operations to include a giant MR (GMR) program that
would produce heads for next generation 3.2 to 16.8 gigabyte products.
The company has manufacturing operations in California, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, employing
some 24,500 people. Insiders own about 4% of the stock.
FINANCIAL FACTS
Income Statement
12-month sales: $1,171.9 million
12-month income: $88 million*
12-month EPS: $1.81*
Profit Margin: 7.5%*
Market Cap: $729 million
(*Excludes all charges: $1.9 million for debt pre-payment; $14.8 million Micropolis loss reserve; $92 million reserve for
inductive head phase-out)
Balance Sheet
Cash: $227.5 million
Current Assets: $458.5 million
Current Liabilities: $211 million
Long-term Debt: $417 million
Ratios
Price-to-earnings: 7.7
Price-to-sales: 0.62
HOW COULD YOU HAVE SEEN IT COMING?
In May, Quantum formed a joint venture with its primary Japanese manufacturing partner, Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics
(MKE), to make MR recording heads for its drives. This represented the latest move by Quantum to find another head source
and prefigured Read-Rite getting locked out of Quantum's 2.1 gigabyte drive program.
Read-Rite was thus hugely and increasingly dependent on Western Digital, a major risk for any supplier. Also, both were
slower than others in the industry to transition to MR technology. Had the pricing environment held up, that might have been no
problem. But Seagate's inventory troubles and the ensuing price slashing by Fujitsu, exacerbated by the Asian financial crisis,
spelled trouble. As a rapid and costly shift to MR became inevitable, inventory write-offs loomed.
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
Sales to Quantum won't be significant during the first nine months of FY98. And analysts see substantial losses for Western
Digital through at least the next two quarters. Both are major negatives for Read-Rite. Meanwhile, the firm's capital
expenditures this year will run $250 to $300 million.
Moreover, HSA sales have accounted for a growing portion of Read-Rite's total sales (67% last year, up from 57% in FY96).
Because HSAs consist of a bunch of purchased components, they carry much lower gross margins for Read-Rite than do the
plain old HGAs. Plus, tough industry pricing overall is expected to persist for several quarters. So Read-Rite is due for a lot of
near-term pain.
The analysts have basically written off FY98. Earnings estimates of $2.56 a share three months ago have been slashed, with
the real consensus revision probably close to the worst-case projection of a loss of $0.84 per share. Analysts are looking for a
recovery thereafter to $1.00 per share or more for FY99.
The good news is that the market has now squarely adopted MR technology, and Read-Rite is coming along. In the first
quarter (ended in December), MR heads accounted for 46% of sales. Moreover, Western Digital expects to see 80% of its
products using MR technology by the June quarter (up from 20% in the December quarter).
That suggests that Read-Rite's overall sales should move rapidly to MR over the next few months. Plus, Western Digital's
near-term dependence on Read-Rite for supply may support gross margins for now. Read-Rite also has been qualified as a
suppler by five customers for the next generation 2.8 gigabyte MR heads.
Investors looking for a beaten-down play in the disk drive industry should include Read-Rite among the candidates. On the
other hand, the company's even greater dependence on its current customers suggests that it may prove a laggard in a
recovery.
-- Louis Corrigan
(TMFSeymor@aol.com)
Steve |
