In my notes, I have Hutchinson selling 8 1/2 million conventional suspensions a week. If Innovex is selling as stated here, where are the other wires coming from? Invx should be selling at least as many wires as Hutch sells convensional suspensions, shouldn't they?
Hutch's TSA numbers include an assambly, and TSA suspensions would counted separately. NHK buys some TSA wires from Hutch, but not that many. Where are the other wires coming from. Inventory?
The company shipped about 5.5 million lead wire units per week this quarter (compared to nearly 7 million last quarter, and nearly 11 million at the peak last year). Shipments were flat throughout the quarter, and current run rate is at about the same 5.5 million now. Innovex has lost a certain amount of overall volume to other competing interconnect products that require less lead wires per unit (so Innovex sells less lead wires when it does sell). The company believes that once it has its complete line of FSA products to the market, it will win customers back, because it will have the technology advantage and the best pricing however you look at it.
HIF sales were between 500,000 and one million units per week the last quarter. Sales began at one million per week and ended at one million per week, varying in between, but now seem to be on an upward trend. Seagate is the only high production customer, but prototype pre-production quantities have been shipping to several customers for a few months.
Keep in mind, there are other suspension makers besides Hutchinson. There is KRP, NHK, Magnecomp, Applied Magnetics and a few in house programs and some I don't know of course. Surely, they must supply at least another 3 million conventional suspensions between them if not more.
If there's need for wires for perhaps 11 million suspensions, where are the other 5 million wires coming from?
Also, I believe they supply a wire for Iomega's Zip and Jazz drives. These should be TFI heads. These drives are still selling and they should be making up some of the non MR numbers. The same should be true for Syquest? Syquest also announced a removeable Jazz like drive that used MR heads.
Anyway, the number seems low now that I think about it. Any explanations?
Regards,
Mark |
