Hi Judy,
I'll try to post my observations from the conference at H&Q. I'll be attending some of the small ones I'm interested in: Verity, Broadvision, Verilink, Visigenic, and Edify.
I agree with your comments on MACR. At one time it was a great stock and great option premiums.
My mid-term (2-3 months?) view on CUBE and ESST is very cautious. I'm not as nimble as you as far as trading. I was able to short CUBE some time ago, but it is difficult to find stock to short - due to restrictions based on the large short interest. So if I had covered, I would not have been able to short/box again (I think). I was cautious about a long position in CUBE when ESST was due to present the following day. The CEO of ESST is very aggressive and has a very high target for VCD market share for this year. In order for ESST to obtain a large market share, we may have a price war, accellerating toward the end of the year..not good for either company. DVD offers a very large market for CUBE, however, they will not own the market in DVD, like they did VCD. They key, I believe, is to determine if CUBE will be used by the LARGE Japanese electronics companies, Sony, Toshiba, and Matshushita..or will they use their own(or non-CUBE) chips. CUBE will also face competition from LSI, ESST, and others. My opinion is that CUBE will do very well, but near term uncertainty will put pressure on the stock. Why not wait for the uncertainty to clear? At the local electronics store I can order a DVD (they will not be available for a while). Also, limited (~25 movies will be available later this month) supply of movies and cost of equipment may delay acceptance of DVD. It would be wonderful to have a DVD with AC3 (Dolby) but the DVD is $600+ and the speakers needed for the Dolby are well over $1000..so the price adds up. So I am cautious on both CUBE and ESST. Also, CUBE tends to get very weak right before they report qtr EPS. There is a lot of uncertainty for this qtr.
Re CSCC, I believe it still looks very good long term (see my post 5550 to Kevin). The main reason it is down is due to the uncertainty for this quarter. Much of the uncertainty comes from knowing the spending plans of the telcos. They don't get their annual budget until late in the quarter, so I would expect CSCC management to start giving info to the analysts very soon and this may give the stock a boost. Apparently, the same thing happened last year. So this may get cleared up prior to this quarters earnings report. |
