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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: limtex who wrote (7098)	9/26/1999 8:23:00 PM
From: Starlight	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 60323

According to this news release from last April, 75% of the CF production is being done in China: SanDisk Positions Itself For Expected Major Growth: New Location Will Reduce Manufacturing Costs, Result in Products Getting to Market Significantly Faster and Greatly Increase Production Capacity SHANGHAI, CHINA, April 22, 1999 – SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today announced a new off-shore manufacturing strategy under which it is expanding its manufacturing operations to mainland China. Production in China started earlier this month at a high volume, state-of-the-art plant operated by Celestica in the city of Changping, about 100 miles northwest of Hong Kong. SanDisk officials, who are making the announcement at press briefings today in Shanghai and tomorrow in Beijing, said that approximately 75 percent of its unit production of flash memory is expected to be assembled in China. Manufacturing new products, and production of high-end or customer specific products with relatively low-volumes, will continue at company headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. Ralph Hudson, SanDisk's senior vice president of worldwide operations, said, "We are positioning the company for rapid growth by moving most of our high volume, CompactFlash™ manufacturing to Asia. About 95 percent of the raw materials we buy to make our flash memory cards and devices come from Asia and we have a large customer base there. With this strategy, we are shortening and streamlining the supply chain to improve efficiency and time to market." He added that "SanDisk is partnering in China with Celestica, a $3 billion, multinational, high volume, advanced contract manufacturer. Celestica, which already does manufacturing for numerous major technology companies including Compaq, IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, has a highly automated, world-class manufacturing plant in Changping and SanDisk will benefit from the manufacturing efficiencies and capacity upside of that plant." SanDisk is experiencing rapid growth mainly because of the increasing popularity of consumer electronics products such as digital cameras, MP3 internet music players, handheld computers, smart phones and audio recorders – all products that use SanDisk memory cards to store either digital images, digital audio or data. SanDisk shipped almost two million flash products in 1998, including nearly 1.3 million CompactFlash™ (CF™) cards. Hudson said, "This new manufacturing strategy will dramatically increase our ability to quickly respond to major business developments. We will be able to rapidly double or quadruple our product production. SanDisk has always worked hard at achieving a low cost structure with high quality flash memory and this continues to be the company's highest priority." SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, CA. The matters discussed in this news release contain forward looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update the information in this release. CompactFlash and CF are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation.

To: limtex who wrote (7098)	9/26/1999 8:31:00 PM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Limtex, You are unusually bullish. I take this as an extremely positive indicator. I also agree that printing CF cards will be like a license to print money. It is indeed difficult to imagine a surplus of inventory or an inventory write off like we have seen before as product goes stale on the shelves. Hope that the SanDisk mint is fully operational to fill the enormous void that will be created this holiday. Ausdauer (scratching his armpit and making funny gorilla noises with a banana in the other hand)