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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jmanvegas who wrote (55807)	12/22/1999 1:18:00 PM
From: William Hunt	Respond to of 152472

Thread--- Qualcomm to Unveil Buyer for Handset Unit; May Sell to Nokia 12/22/99 8:23:00 AM Source: Bloomberg News San Diego, Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Qualcomm Inc., leading the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, said it will name the buyer of its wireless-phone business today. It may sell the barely profitable unit to No. 1 cell-phone manufacturer Nokia Oyj, analysts said. Other companies likely to have bid on the unit include Siemens AG, Kyocera Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., maker of the Panasonic brand, analysts said. Motorola Inc., the No. 2 handset maker, also could be a winner. Qualcomm will unveil the buyer after the close of regular U.S. trading. Quote Snapshot ERICY 58.00 -1.50 QCOM 488.81 -8.06 MOT 140.63 2.13 Enter symbol: ú Symbol Lookup More from CNET Investor Quotes delayed 20+ minutes Qualcomm said in September that it planned to find a buyer for the business, which designs and makes handsets for the code division multiple access, or CDMA, standard it developed. The company wants to focus on making semiconductors for CDMA phones and collecting CDMA royalties from phone makers, including the one that buys the handset unit. ``The best-case scenario for Qualcomm is if they sell it to Nokia or Motorola,' said Warburg Dillon Read LLC analyst Jeff Schlesinger. ``They're the most likely to make the business successful in the long run.' Ericsson AB, mentioned as a possible bidder, said it isn't buying the unit. Shares of San Diego-based Qualcomm rose 1 5/8 to 498 1/2 in late morning trading. Earlier, the stock touched a record 524. Hardly Profitable Qualcomm used phone-making to ensure the spread of CDMA, which competes with two other wireless standards. The business is hardly profitable, though, with operating margins of about 2 percent, analysts have estimated. Nokia, by comparison, has operating margins of more than 15 percent on handsets. Analysts expect Qualcomm to sell the unit mainly in exchange for a lucrative contract to supply its wireless chips to the buyer. The bigger the buyer, the better the contract for Qualcomm. ``Price is the least important thing,' said Schlesinger. ``What's important is what kind of deal to supply chips Qualcomm negotiates with the company.' Schlesinger said for an agreement with Nokia to be favorable, the Finnish company would have to commit to buying 25 percent of its CDMA semiconductors from Qualcomm. In the case of Kyocera or Matsushita, which don't sell as many handsets, the commitment would have to be for 50 percent or more, he said. Qualcomm declined to comment on the sale other than to say the buyer will be a single company. Some analysts had speculated that two companies would split the manufacturing and design components of the handset unit. BEST WISHES BILL