Lines of Battle Are Murkier Than I Thought.
Thanks for the correction regarding Nokia/Ericsson
outsourcing efforts to SCI, Flextronics, et al.
Here's link to article on upcoming H&Q conference.
sjmercury.com
With the following excerpt:
Posted at 4:39 p.m. PDT Sunday, April 26, 1998
Reading tech tea leaves at H&Q
April 27, 1998
BY ADAM LASHINSKY
Mercury News Staff Writer
TECH STOCK investors once liked to repeat a simple
investing maxim: Buy 'em at the AEA, sell 'em at H&Q.
The loading-up signal was the American Electronics
Association annual financial conference in the late fall, and
the time to bail was at the Hambrecht & Quist Technology
Conference, which begins Monday in San Francisco.
Like many chestnuts, this one doesn't necessarily work
anymore. With a handful of tech segments already in the
dumps -- don't worry, we'll come back to the
anything-but-dumpy Internet group -- it isn't likely the
whole sector is heading for a traditional summer slump.
Or is it? Signals from a handful of prominent tech-stock
soothsayers, including some normally unsure how to spell the
word ''sell,'' are decidedly downbeat.
The man of the moment is Bruce M. Lupatkin, research
director for H&Q, who'll be shepherding the conference's
300-plus presenting companies.
Lupatkin surprisingly is gloomy for a man with a legion of
sell-side analysts working for him. He warns especially to
stay away from companies associated with personal
computers, including the dreaded PC makers themselves.
''There's the promise of a second-half rebound,'' Lupatkin
says, referring to favorable comments Intel Corp. (Nasdaq,
INTC) has made recently. ''But I believe we've heard that
promise for three years now.''
As such, Lupatkin advises that ''it's a little too early to get
involved'' in stocks of companies that make or distribute PCs,
disk drives or commodity microprocessors. That includes
contract manufacturers focused on the PC industry. |
