John, thestreet.com article is interesting.
Micron is the leading maker of memory chips,
I'm going to nit-pick a little. On the plus side, "leading" is better than "largest", but A) Samsung is the market share leader B) if they're "leading", why have other companies already begun volume production of higher densities (Samsung recently claimed it had begun volume production of 256-Mbit SDRAM on .18u process in March) C) why are other companies further ahead on RDRAM?
"I would be surprised if they make less than 20 cents a share," says Shaker Investments portfolio manager Edward Hemmelgarn, whose $300 million fund is long Micron. In the second quarter, the company saw 50% growth in sales of bits, a measurement for memory, from the previous quarter, Hemmelgarn says.
THAT's the line I find hilarious.
A 50% growth in bit shipments in one quarter would be "phenomenal," says Dataquest analyst Jim Handy, because the market as a whole is expected to grow 65% for the full year.
Hey, what's a balanced viewpoint doing in a piece on Micron?
But Hemmelgarn and BancBoston Robertson Stephens analyst Dan Niles believe that falling DRAM prices will help Micron in the long run by driving out competition. In the meantime, Niles says, Micron is cutting manufacturing costs faster than DRAM prices are falling. Niles, who has a strong buy on Micron, expects to see a 10-cent-a-share profit on $971 million in quarterly revenue.
That's consolidated revenue. $971 mil. includes MUEI contribution.
How sustainable is the cost-cutting? Was it driven by a process shift?
Driving out some marginal competition, yet where do the Taiwainese fit in?
Shekhar Wadekar, a chip analyst with Raymond James, is less enthusiastic about Micron's prospects. Wadekar, who has a neutral rating on the stock, says investors got carried away in the latter half of last year, mistaking rising memory-chip prices for rising demand. Instead, prices firmed because of a transition from 16-megabyte chips to the denser 64-megabyte chips. That shift caused a temporary shortage, but now supplies have picked up and prices are falling.
Wadekar declined to give an earnings estimate for the second quarter, saying it's too difficult to predict.
Two sane viewpoints in one MU article? This is unprecedented!
Earnings are always difficult to predict, but the level of "difficulty" he's referring to is dead-on right.
thestreet.com
A noticeably better piece in comparison to the one from ZDII.
Of course, both literally blow the living [hell] out of that total piece of garbage Barron's ran. Oh, excuse me, that's right - after the stock backed off, Barron's had to do a follow-up piece containing an unbelievable litany of errors.
Good trading,
Tom |
