Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Amy J who wrote (90215)	10/14/1999 8:21:00 AM
From: AurumRabosa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Amy, Wouldn't that be nice if Intel was truly immune to the Taiwan induced shortages. Intel management may actually believe that but I think they're deluding themselves. Taiwan produces 80% of the world's motherboards and those factories went down in the quake. MB factories are much easier to start back up than a semiconductor fab but it did stop production for at least 2 weeks. DRAM chips have been put on allocation (i.e., rationing) for the time being. Thanks to the RMBS Camino chip set fiasco fabs that had converted from making DRAM to Rambus memory have stopped production and are switching back to DRAM. Soon there will be a glut of DRAM but not in time for the xmas season. The big killer is the impact to graphics chip makers. Why would a box maker build PCs and stock them in inventory if they cannot get a graphics controller board. DELL will be seriously impacted by this since they practice JIT to the extreme and that explains why insiders are selling tons of DELL stock in a real show of faith. So you buy the dogmatic claim that Intel can sell all the CPUs they can make even though box makers cannot get all the parts they need to build the PCs? On the Micron Only thread Fabeyes and I discussed in detail what's involved in restarting a fab after a power outage. I predicted that almost all of the quartz parts, and all of the quartz diffusion tubes would have to be replaced, and it appears to be true. There's not enough quartz spares in stock to handle that and I'm sure the qaurtz parts makers are working a lot of overtime. Don't be fooled by carefully worded press releases that give the impression that Taiwan fabs are back up to production. Just because you can get one tool in each operation online and run a wafer through the fab it's a long way to being "fully" up to production. Ask Process Boy for the honest truth of how much work and time it takes to re-qual a downed fab. He's fond of discussing Intel's Top Secret P858 process in public and giving the impression he's sharing valuable insider information with all his INTC investor brethren. Put him to the test. Taiwan built their fabs to the highest earthquake standards so the buildings were not damaged. However, they forgot one little detail, they did not bolt the tools to the floor and they walked and broke all the quartz transfer tubes. There's been a lot of spin put on trying to play down the impact of the Taiwan earthquake to the semiconductor industry and Intel is not immune. Do you genuinely believe Taiwan will not hurt Intel CPU sales? By the time you find out next year INTC will have slumped well off its highs. INTC goes flat for 2 year periods as you can clearly see from looking at INTC's price chart. INTC also has many 30% and 40% drawdowns. You may be willing to ride them out, I'm not. Best of luck to you.

To: Amy J who wrote (90215)	10/14/1999 1:27:00 PM
From: Saturn V	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Amy < At the CC, Paul O said Intel was not impacted by the quake> I was a little surprised by that statement too. The Intel bashers and some in the media insist that eighty percent of PC motherboards are made in Taiwan. That is a gross error ! The reality is that a vast majority(>50%) of PC motherboards are still made by Intel. And none of Intel's motherboards are made in Taiwan. However eighty percent of non-Intel motherboards do come from Taiwan, and so I did expect a slight disruption due to motherboards made in Taiwan. My greater concern was the graphic boards and chips, since they are made exclusively in Taiwan. So a shortage of graphics boards could affect the sales of Intel processors. However as repeatedly pointed out by Paul Otellini, the new Intel chipsets (810 etc)include the graphics functions in the chipset. Thus the computer makers who use the new Intel chipsets would be immune from the effects of the quake. And Paul Otellini stated that the new Intel chipsets dominate the shipments. My take is that the Taiwan's impact is less than I had feared, but something which may still end up hurting Intel slightly, due to shortages of other components like DRAM or high end graphics boards. And I hope that Paul Otellini did his homework right, and that I am wrong.