To: CAtechTrader who wrote (17219 ) 5/2/2000 11:16:00 AM From: LBstocks Respond to of 35685
Tim Luke (Lehman Bros.) report on QCOM> We believe QCOM is seeing strengthening momentum in its CDMA chipset business in the current FY3Q00 period with especially strong shipments of its 3000 & 3100 chipsets into the Korean & Japanese markets. We maintain QCOM may be poised to comfortably exceed prior guidance levels of 14.5 million units up from just 11.2 million ($279 million) in FY2Q00 with shipments of as high as 16 million units (or more than $370 million) likely to be achievable. With strong chip shipments, likely to be coupled with royalties of at least $155 million, our revenue estimate of approximately $750 million for FY3Q00 may be exceeded. Additionally, our high-end EPS estimate of $0.28 in FY3Q00 may also prove conservative while QCOM continues to invest heavily in R&D. Furthermore, we look for QCOM's book-to-bill at the close of FY3Q99 to be comfortably above 1 as we enter the seasonally strong FY4Q00. Our checks indicate that contrary to recent rumors which emerged at the end of last week rival CDMA chip supplier LSI Logic has not received a design win to supply Samsung which has been a major customer for QCOM. We have also been encouraged to learn from Japanese sources that contrary to recent speculation leading Japanese operator DDI has not yet selected W-CDMA technology for its 3G network and may in fact favor the CDMA2000 architecture promoted by QUALCOMM when it confirms its 3G technology selection next week. Although Qualcomm benefits from the deployment of any CDMA technology, we would view the selection of the architecture favored by QCOM as positive for the CDMA innovator. We continue to be impressed by the development of QCOM's new High Data Rate (HDR) technology with Lucent completing its first live transmission last week which was demonstrated with a streaming video application at 153kbps. Following the completion of this transmission, mega-carrier Verizon has announced it will implement the technology as part of a pilot series beginning this June. We see the long-term outlook for QUALCOMM continuing to brighten as momentum grows behind the adoption of CDMA technology. We remain encouraged by the strong growth prospects for both QUALCOMM and the global CDMA market. We believe that the current strong CDMA growth is a testament to the benefits of the technology. In the US, the highly successful one-rate plans offered by many major carriers such as Sprint and Bell Atlantic are likely to continue to drive rapid CDMA subscriber growth. Overseas, the removal of uncertainty of standards should help several large new markets such as Japan, Brazil, India and even China gain momentum in 2H00. QUALCOMM should also benefit from increased royalty revenues as the existing CDMA market expands and as a converged global third generation wireless standard based on CDMA begins to be deployed. We continue to view QUALCOMM as a core wireless holding with its leverage to CDMA growth and the development of new data enabled wireless networks. We are maintaining our 1 Buy rating on QUALCOMM. We believe that our new FY00 and FY01 estimates of $1.08 and $1.40 may prove highly conservative. Our price target is $180.