Dan, you prepared an excellent and thorough analysis, and as I said last night, I'm certainly not bailing. Unfortunately, I suspect that we're not going anywhere for a while. The management has lost all credibility with the Street. After almost guaranteeing during the last conference call that they were going to make their numbers in Q3, two analysts upgraded them. Six weeks later the shit hit the fan, and the stock has fallen by 2/3. Then last night I heard the most unprofessional conference call I've ever heard. I can't believe that Stein was so unprepared and unclear with his answers to questions. He clearly did NOT say they had CDMA design wins. He said chips were favorably received but still in the evaluation stage (software adjustments, bug fixes, etc.)
Anyway, I agree this company has great prospects, and it sure seems to be at the lowest possible valuation, unless business turns worse. However, I am not convinced that Stein cares about shareholder value. One indication is that they aren't buying all of stock that they can right now (at least he didn't say so).
The market right now doesn't care about prospects, they want profits and growth. And since VLSI has burned the analysts, it will take a couple of quarters of big results to win them back, Consequently, we may not go any lower. But we're not going significantly higher any time soon.
Jay |
