SCUMbria - Our Buddy Tad had a busy week !
"Start Tuesday with breakfast with CFO of AMD. Discuss outlook for K7 microprocessor and variance with model. He's dealing with hostile investment community due to 4Q shortfall, but "show me" attitude has created some very interesting investment potential.....
It worked wonders getting me good and relaxed, just in time to go back to work on Monday and have AMD preannounce a significant loss."
Enjoy his little DIARY !
Paul
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March madness: A week in the life By A.A. LaFountain III,
Electronic Buyers' News Mar 15, 1999 (9:05 AM) URL: ebnews.com
Needham & Co. Inc. Notes on a recent work week:Start Monday working at home, then head to a corporate finance meeting at a client site to discuss possible merger-and-acquisition activity. Run through pros and cons of potential candidates stretching across different product lines. Discuss benefits and challenges associated with shifts in geographic orientation. (Seems like equation has large number of variables with matching set of unknowns. Still too early in process for any resolution.) Head to airport. Catch evening plane to SFO and arrive in Sunnyvale at 11 am.
Start Tuesday with breakfast with CFO of AMD. Discuss outlook for K7 microprocessor and variance with model. He's dealing with hostile investment community due to 4Q shortfall, but "show me" attitude has created some very interesting investment potential. News of PC slowdown (Compaq, Dell, Micron Electronics) has hit the semiconductor stocks, but AMD had already been beaten up. My own stance (strong buy on AMD, hold on Intel) runs counter to that of most other analysts, but don't hear anything that appears to undermine our investment thesis. Flash market showing signs of improvement, with better tone to pricing and slightly longer lead times (although benefits to income statement will lag).
Off to Palo Alto to join investment bankers for IPO pitch to company actually headquartered on East Coast (but with a West Coast board of directors). Company based on intellectual property, so a difficult story to grasp. We get it (the story) and the company seems to appreciate that, so we'll find out if we get it (the deal).
Then lunch with San Jose-based startup creating chipsets for symmetric multiprocessor servers. Switch-matrix architecture could have a significant impact on the PC-server business (by facilitating the use of low-cost K7's instead of high-priced Intel Xeon microprocessors) and may have applicability in the telecom sector. Company appears on track for first silicon this summer. Once again, amazed at the pace and scale of innovation.
Run to meeting with CFO of Atmel. Business tracking earlier guidance, and tone of flash business seems to be improving (second such comment in one day). Leave meeting comfortable with strong-buy rating. Go to SJC and catch flight to DFW.
Meet Wednesday morning with STMicroelectronics in Carrollton, Texas. Memory manager comments that flash market appears to be improving. (Hmmmm, where have I heard this before?) Another executive makes favorable comments about IPO candidate from previous day's meeting with whom he has a good business relationship.
Then back to hotel for workshop put on by Texas Instruments in preparation for analyst meeting the next day. Simple message-DSP rocks and TI rules. Come away with one overwhelming reaction: In 20 years of analyzing companies, I have never seen one reinvent itself as completely as TI. This used to be one of the most arrogant organizations in the business, with a corporate culture that bordered on bunker mentality. Now it appears to be one of the most customer-conscious companies in the semiconductor industry, and the reward for its transformation is a franchise that may be the most impressive in the sector. Hooray for them and good for their customers.
Dinner Wednesday night is hosted by Dallas Semiconductor. Their story is not as compelling as Monica's interview, but it sure feels better. Interesting juxtaposition, as Vin Prothro (the Dallas Semi CEO) used to head Mostek (which built the ST fab in Carrollton). Learned his lesson well, and has avoided commodity memory like the plague.
Thursday, TI hosts the analyst meeting, which is a tour de force. Emphasis on the effort to secure a greater part of the analog catalog business, with Analog Devices and National Semiconductor right in TI's cross hairs. The strategy appears logical and measured; if I were a buyer of standard analog parts, I'd be licking my chops. After the meeting, able to catch an earlier flight delayed by bad weather, which we then fly into. Finally make it home near midnight.
Alarm at 4:40 goes off much too early any day, but after a West Coast trip it's particularly brutal. Head back into the office on Friday to catch up on work. Spend some of the day participating in meetings for our company's technology-revision effort.
The weekend comes just in the nick of time. Able to accomplish two things of note. The first is to finish Rob Rodin's new book Free, Perfect and Now. Anyone in the electronics business (supplier, distributor, buyer) should read what he's gone through at Marshall. I found it especially topical, as Needham wrestles with a major technology upgrade.
The second is to go see Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal in Analyze This. Anyone in the electronics business should go laugh at this for 100 minutes as a way of dealing with the rest of the week. It worked wonders getting me good and relaxed, just in time to go back to work on Monday and have AMD preannounce a significant loss.
And so it goes. |
