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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas Tam who wrote (6520)	2/15/2000 11:00:00 AM
From: Caxton Rhodes	Respond to of 13582

Money cover: 3 Qualcomm millionaires By Mike Drummond STAFF WRITER February 15, 2000 San Diegans (from left) Ramsey Su, Rosario Maiolino and Terence Daly made the cover of Money magazine. Ramsey Su never thought he'd make the cover of an international magazine. Then again, he never dreamed he'd see his investment in Qualcomm soar 2,600 percent during one weird, wild year. Su and two other San Diego "Quillionaires," Rosario Maiolino and Terence Daly, grace the cover of the March issue of Money, vaulted to 15-minute-fame status by their years of buying shares in the local wireless technology company. The magazine reports that the trio's combined stakes were worth $35 million at the stock's peak in December. "I was hoping to get on the cover of Sports Illustrated with Kathy Ireland or even Michael Jordan or somebody," Su joked. "But I don't think that's in the cards." What is in the cards is that at the ripe "old" age of 48, Su has made enough money from his Qualcomm stock to retire as a real estate broker. For most of the past decade, Su and a handful of regulars gathered online to swap information and share insights about Qualcomm. In those early days, Qualcomm engineers would share information with people such as Su -- a practice that the company has since outlawed. "We felt pretty confident that the stock was going to do well," he said. "But none of us ever anticipated a 2,600 percent return on our investment." Money magazine's cover story chronicles the sweet rise of Qualcomm's stock, from the days when it languished in the low $50s, through the meteoric lift after the company announced it was selling its money-losing infrastructure division as part of a patent settlement with Swedish rival Ericsson; and concludes with the buying frenzy that saw the stock climb to more than $500 a share in December. The magazine anointed Qualcomm as the "it" stock of 1999, liking it to Yahoo!, which rose 511 percent in 1997, and Amazon.com, which spiked 966 percent a year later. Indeed, 1999 was so heady for Qualcomm that the company was added to and then became the head-and-shoulders leader of the prestigious Standard and Poors 500 index. It's a story known all too well among investors such as Su. "We basically analyzed the company to death," Su said. "We'd go to shareholder meetings, go on tour and find everything we can about the company. "Not only did Qualcomm succeed," he added, "everything was beyond expectations." However, since January the stock has been on a slide. Qualcomm, traded as QCOM, closed yesterday at $127.121/2 -- adjusted for a 4-for-1 stock split -- and was down $4.871/2. Last week at the San Diego Convention Center, Qualcomm CEO Irwin Jacobs -- worth more than $3 billion on paper -- recounted his company's beginnings for a group attending an investment seminar. Jacobs had emerged from a three-month retirement in 1985, after selling Linkabit, a successful and immensely fertile company that spawned dozens of other start-ups. Jacobs and colleague Andrew Viterbi, both blessed with the rare combination of intellect and business moxie, were restless. They still had ideas cranking in their heads and wanted to see if they could commercialize "code division multiple access," or CDMA. After overcoming naysayers, market doubters and aggressive competitors, Jacobs and Viterbi have prevailed, and CDMA has become the fastest-growing wireless technology in the world. "The idea behind starting Qualcomm was to have fun," Jacobs said. Su and 20 to 30 other "old-timers" who have been following Qualcomm for years plan to meet before, during and after Qualcomm's annual shareholders meeting next month. The group will golf, sail and dine in fine style -- a feast of wealth made possible almost entirely because Jacobs and Viterbi wanted to have a little fun. Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.