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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (86686)	1/12/2000 1:32:00 PM
From: f.simons	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572713

>>, the opposite is true of Bill Fleckenstein of Fleckenstein Capital and Fred Hickey of the High Tech Strategist newsletter. Both are known as longtime bears on technology, which means they're often dismissed as "permabear" crackpots.<< Hi Ted- This is putting Fleckenstein's position in the money management world a little kindly. This is a guy who was managing upwards of 100MM three years ago and is now down to about 20MM. He is a joke. He has been predicting bad quarters for Intel for so long he is bound to be right once in a while. Why doesn't Greenberg list all the quarters where Fleck was wrong? It may well be that Intel will miss Q4. We will know tomorrow. But if Fleck is right about the quarter it will be because even a broken clock is right twice a day, not because he knows what he is doing. Regards Frank

To: tejek who wrote (86686)	1/12/2000 11:04:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572713

Tejek - Re: "GREENBERG HAS AN INCREDIBLE RECORD OF SEEING THROUGH THE HYPE AND KNOWING WHAT A STOCK'S REAL STATUS IS. " Here is one of Herbie's better columns ! {=================================} COMMENTARY >> HERB ON THESTREET How Is It That AMD's CEO Manages to Survive Such Lousy Performance? By Herb Greenberg Senior Columnist 3/11/99 6:30 AM ET The proxy for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD:NYSE), due out in several weeks, should be unusually good reading in light of the company's inability to get out of its own way. Here you have a chipmaker that finally helps break Intel's (INTC:Nasdaq) lock on the PC market and keeps blaming poor earnings performance on manufacturing problems. Jim Cramer had a good spin on this the other day, but the real question is: How does CEO Jerry Sanders get away with it? The stock hasn't done anything for the better part of 15 years, yet Sanders boasted a $1 million salary in 1997. While he wasn't paid a bonus, he took home an additional $617,000 owed from prior years and $257,000 in the form of cars and personal security. "The only thing he ever excelled in over Intel was his pay," scoffs long-time critic Graef Crystal, who writes the online newsletter on compensation CrystalReport.com. "That's the one thing he could beat Andy Grove in." To be sure, in 1997, while he was still CEO, Grove's salary was $465,000 (with a $2.7 million bonus). So, again, how does Sanders get away with it, and how long will his reign continue? Actually, by contract, his leadership is scheduled to last until 2003, and, even then, it's unlikely to end unless AMD's board changes. "Clearly, Jerry has always dominated his board," says S.G. Cowen analyst Drew Peck, who has a neutral rating on the stock. Those board members include longtimers Freidrich Baur, president of a German consulting firm; Charles Blalack, dean of the University of Southern California's School of Engineering and Joe Roby, president of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette -- on whose board Sanders sits. (How cozy!) Peck says AMD's aggressiveness under Sanders sparked Intel to become a much better manufacturer in recent years. The latest snafus caused AMD's stock to lose nearly half its value over a period of several months. It closed Wednesday at 17 3/8. A spokesman says the company isn't satisfied with its manufacturing execution, but that it's at a disadvantage by being one-tenth Intel's size; it simply doesn't have the resources Intel has. (Because the resources are all going to Sanders, no?) Okay, cheap shot, but Peck warns that if the stock keeps going down, perhaps to the $13 range, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that some deep-pocketed foreign firm with better manufacturing capabilities could do to AMD what Royal Philips Electronics is trying to do to VLSI Technology (VLSI:Nasdaq) -- make a hostile offer. The AMD spokesman says the company prefers to be independent. As if it had any choice? (He also declined to comment on issues concerning Sanders' reign and said that board members generally don't comment on internal affairs. I tried to contact two board members, who haven't yet returned my call.) {====================================} Yep - Herb sure can see through the HYPE ! Paul