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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (89380)	10/3/1999 9:16:00 PM
From: philipah	Respond to of 186894

New York Times predicts STRONG semi earnings (except AMD): Filed at 5:06 p.m. EDT By Reuters SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. semiconductor companies are expected to report strong third quarter earnings, but analysts are concerned about the fourth quarter because of damage to Taiwanese chip plants from last month's earthquake. ``Clearly, the market is not tuned to the September quarter results, or even upsides to estimates for the quarter,' said Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Prudential Securities. ``Rather, it is the outlook for Q4 that investors are worried about.' Many semiconductor companies use foundries in Taiwan to manufacture chips designed in the United States. The Sept. 21 earthquake, which registered 7.6 on the Richter scale, killed over 2,100 people, toppled buildings and cut power to most of the island, halting the operations of Taiwan's chip plants. Taiwan supplies 10 percent of global chip demand and is also the home to the industry's largest foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. A halt in operations would likely restrict supplies of graphics chips, computer motherboards, memory chips and other customized specialty chips, mostly used by the PC industry. The prices of vulnerable chip stocks and some PC stocks were somewhat volatile in the past week, due to investor jitters about Taiwan's impact. ``For some companies, particularly those tied to the PC and those not in a market share gaining mode, that is where the risk lies for the fourth quarter,' said Mark Edelstone, an analyst with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel's biggest rival in microprocessors, was scheduled to be the first to report this Wednesday. The company was expected to report a loss as it struggled in the highly competitive pricing environment for PC processors against Intel Corp. ``AMD continues to face difficult times due primarily to a low unit volume of microprocessors,' said Erika Klauer, an analyst with Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown. Klauer and other analysts said that while AMD's flash memory business saw strong demand in the quarter, it was not enough to offset a weak performance in processors. AMD was also to detail its first shipment numbers of its new Athlon processor, but those were expected to be just a couple of hundred thousand units, since it had started to ship only in early August. But apart from AMD, the rest of the semiconductor industry was expected to report a very strong third quarter. ``It's going to be a fantastic quarter for the whole semiconductor industry,' said David Wu, an analyst at ABN-AMRO Chicago Corp. ``If they don't beat the published estimates, I'll be surprised.' One company that many analysts believed would beat estimates was chip giant Intel, which supplies over 80 percent of the world's microprocessors. Wu even predicted in early September that Intel would disclose an upside surprise ahead of its formal announcement. But even if Intel beat estimates, analysts and investors would be more anxious to hear its comments about how the Taiwanese earthquake would affect its fourth quarter. ``The worse case is they will be giving guidance for lower earnings based on the disruption in the supply chain,' said Drew Peck, an SG Cowen & Co. analyst. ``The interesting aspect of all of this is that overall semiconductor demand is probably the strongest that it has been in five years.' The following is a chart of earnings estimates for several U.S. semiconductor companies, as compiled by First Call. COMPANY ESTIMATE REPORTING DATE AMD Loss $0.97 Oct 6 Altera Profit $0.26 Oct 13 Atmel Profit $0.16 Oct 20 Cypress Semi Profit $0.20 Oct 19 Intel Profit $0.57 Oct 12 LSI Logic Profit $0.30 Oct 21 Nvidia Profit $0.23 Nov 16 PMC-Sierra Profit $0.24 Oct 14 Texas Instru. Profit $0.43 Oct 14 Xilinx (Q2) Profit $0.33 Oct 19