Skeeter, the fact that Gruntal lowered their FY99 estimates in a "Flash Fax" 4-22-99 the day after Niles lowered his "research" opinion 4-21-99 in no way proves that MU management was out their guiding estimates lower.
The fact that the 4-22-99 Gruntal document begins:
"MU shares came under pressure yesterday as the company guided analyst estimates lower based on continued softness
in spot market prices for DRAMs..."
...IMHO, that does. <g>
The Gruntal estimate cut seemed to slip through a lot of cracks.
The funny thing is, you go to simplystocks.com, pull up MU, and hit "broker reports", you see the following for that Gruntal note 4-22-99:
4/22/99 Gruntal & Co. reiterates strong buy, maintain estimates
That's simply not true. They maintained their FY'00 estimate of $3.00, but they cut their FY'99 number to .50 from .90, lowering 99'3Q to .16 from .38 and 99'4Q to .45 from .64.
What's also interesting is that the title of the report is:
MICRON TECHNOLOGY (MU)–FISCAL 1999 ESTIMATE REDUCED TO
REFLECT CONTINUED SOFT DRAM PRICING; REITERATE STRONG BUY
So how any "interested parties" altruistically doling out info on that particular report to media or investment sites could have screwed that one up is interesting.
I love how it takes management to "guide" some of these analysts down when at their level one would expect that they possess the ability to monitor industry pricing and then take the added step of factoring that reality into the oh so incredibly complex series of equations that is a simple pro forma income statement.
I guess one could say that some people have ability, but choose not to use it.
Good trading,
Tom |
