Interesting snippet from Barron's concerning Chaplinksy and his recent call on Intel...
Tales from the Valley: Earlier this month, Hambrecht & Quist chip analyst
Robert Chaplinsky made an intriguing call on Intel. He cut his earnings
estimates for the June quarter to 65 cents from 69 cents and warned that
microprocessor unit sales would be down 8%-10% from the March quarter,
with a 3% drop in average selling prices. Chaplinsky cited
weaker-than-expected retail PC sales, high industry inventories of older
Pentium-based machines and seasonal weakening of European sales.
The comments, coming at a time when Intel's stock had already been sliding,
chopped another healthy slice out of the company's market cap. It also got the
Street rumor mill churning.
Chaplinsky, as it happens, came to H&Q about two years ago after a six-year
career at Intel. His last stop there: investor-relations manager. Chaplinsky
contends his tenure at Intel makes him the best-informed analyst on the stock,
and he certainly has become influential. There's certainly no doubt Chaplinsky
has good contacts at Intel. But the whispering on the Street is that inside Intel,
there's concern Chaplinsky's call was uncannily accurate-that perhaps he had
taken advantage of his Intel connections to get information others on the
Street might not have at their disposal. The talk is that Intel has begun an
in-house "witch hunt" to find the leaker, and that the company had been
considering pre-announcing its earnings for the quarter, but decided to hold
off when Chaplinsky made his recent comments.
A spokesman for Intel declined to comment on the rumors; Chaplinsky
danced around the issue. "I'm pretty comfortable with my work on the
company," he says. "If you read my report, I left a lot of the granularity out. It
wasn't that detailed. If Intel speculates that somebody is leaking things to me,
that only verifies the accuracy of my work."
Chaplinsky says he hasn't heard anything from Intel on the issue, but notes that
he's heard from clients that "Intel was questioning how come my call was so
right." Chaplinsky won't say exactly where his information comes from, but
notes "there's enough information in the marketplace to substantiate the
conclusion we drew."
Oddly enough, H&Q still rates Intel a "buy." Chaplinsky, though, advises
against touching the stock until the company provides some information about
second-quarter results. He thinks Intel has three choices: pre-announce, miss
the quarter or pull in some business from the third quarter-and then provide
cautious guidance on the next quarter. Not great options.
"I have good credibility on the Street," Chaplinsky says. "I think my
assessment is fairly accurate. If some people want to think it's derived from
nonethical methods, let them speculate. Now we just have to see if I'm right."
John
PS - Did I read on this thread that John Hull recently took a new job??? <gggg> |
