Barrons 11/4/98 article on DRAM Shortage?
interactive.wsj.com
Talk of DRAM Shortage Powers Chip Stocks
excerpt:
For the first time in what seems like forever, the stocks of long-suffering semiconductor manufacturers are flying high again.
After being pummeled by the Asian crisis and the market's recent selloff, many of the best-known semiconductor companies are within shouting distance of their 52-week highs: Texas Instruments, for one, is trading at 61 13/16, less than 10% below its 52-week high of 66 29/32. Intel, a longtime laggard, has come roaring back and now changes hands above 90, near its March peak. Even memory chip maker Micron Technology, which got no respect for months, closed at its 52-week high of 40 3/16 Tuesday.
What seems to have gotten Wall Street so excited about these stocks are reports of a DRAM shortage next year. Market research firm Dataquest recently came out with a report suggesting that increased demand for memory in PCs, coupled with less supply of dynamic random access memory chips (DRAMs) from fewer plants, will result in a shift back to more demand than supply, and therefore a shortage.
That can't help but boost prices, which look like they have nowhere to go but up. In two years, RAM prices have gone from about $52 per megabit to today's sub-$2.00 per megabit price. That sounds like Moore's Law on speed. |
