Tony:
Re: It seems to me that Niles is trying for that Kurlak evacuated spot.
Maybe Barrett will have a special slide made up for Niles at the annual shareholder's meeting. Looking back, it seems like he was able to put Kurlak in his place with his "what happened to my Intel stock?" slide last year.
I was also unhappy with Niles' appearance on CNBC. If he says "sell" on CNBC, then he needs to back it up with a "sell" rating, not a "long-term attractive". He now basically has two ratings floating around, and is able to cover just about any possible future outcome by pointing to the appropriate ratings call. He also said that excluding the interest/investment income, the earnings were below the concensus. A few minutes later, Haynes corrected him, saying that excluding the interest/investment would put earnings at $0.55, in line with estimates. Niles then backtracked, saying that there was also an extra penny gained by favorable tax rates, so that put earnings at $0.54.
Then Niles went on a rant about free PCs and how that was going to doom Intel with a conversion to the "free phone/pay for airtime" model. He seems to totally disregard the associated demand for servers to counter all of these free PCs. He also disregards the fact that though some PCs may be free to the end-users, they certainly have a cost associated with them, and the manufacturers of them will still be paid. Haynes also countered well with the argument that cell phone are generally high quality products, while most free PCs are left-overs full of obsolete gray market parts. QCOM is an excellent example that blows Niles' argument out of the water - they make an excellent product, make money, and their stock price is up dramatically. BTW - I haven't shopped for a cell phone lately, but are they actually free? I thought the ones with any decent features cost something.
Adam |
