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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Green who wrote (45442)	6/21/2000 7:02:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Micron looks to cash in on rising memory prices By Ian Fried Staff Writer, CNET News.com June 21, 2000, 2:50 p.m. PT URL: news.cnet.com Memory chips are still a boom-and-bust business, but investors are betting big that Micron Technology, which reports earnings tomorrow, and others are still on the upswing segment of the cycle. Shares of Micron, one of the largest memory makers, have surged this week amid enthusiastic reports from analysts that prices will continue to rise because of a growing shortage of DRAM, the type of memory found inside PCs. The stock rose 16 percent to $89.88 from $77.38 during the first two days of trading and traded as high as $94.50 today before closing at around $91 a share. Earlier this week, Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jonathan Joseph upped his earnings estimates, predicting Micron will report $1.52 billion in sales and post earnings of 38 cents per share, a six-cent increase from his prior estimate. Analysts have been looking for Micron to earn 34 cents a share, according to the consensus estimate from First Call/Thomson Financial. Depressed for three straight years, memory prices came out of their slump last September in the wake of the Taiwan earthquake. Prices once again began to slide in November. Since May, however, memory prices have picked up in anticipation of strong PC buying in the second half coupled with shortages. Memory is still actually less expensive than it was in January, but climbing rapidly. The average spot, or surplus market price for 128-megabit 133-MHz SDRAM, the type of memory found in high-end Athlon or Pentium III computers, for instance, rose 19 percent, from $14.06 to $16.74, from June 8 to June 15, according to the American IC Exchange. "We believe the recent upsurge in prices is driven by an expected DRAM shortage in the second half of 2000," stated a Merrill Lynch report from earlier this week. Joseph said Micron is seeing improved yields from its overseas plants and is also selling more EDO (extended data out) chips, a flavor of memory chips that is commanding prices roughly double that of SDRAM. "These are positive trends that will continue (into the coming quarters)," Joseph said. Analysts have long said that memory prices should head higher during the second half of this year as demand begins to outstrip capacity. However, the improved outlook for the second half of the year hasn't stopped two major Micron shareholders from cashing in. Texas Instruments, which sold its memory chip unit to Micron in 1998, has been selling, as has Intel, which yesterday reported that it would have $1.6 billion in higher-than-expected income from stock sales, predominately that of Micron. Joseph estimated that Intel may have sold as much as 20 million of its 25 million shares.

To: Don Green who wrote (45442)	6/22/2000 11:54:00 AM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

I've traded it on the upside but have no position at this point. Now I'm waiting to short - got RMBS on my "short list". A problem I see with RMBS memory is that it offers no advantage at this time over DDRAMS. It can be argued that useable bandwidth for DDRAM is superior to RDRAMs. I think that will remain the case for at least a couple years. Further improvements in DDRAMs are being demonstrated and are expected to go into production at lower cost. This is expected to extend DDRAMs into useful production for at least the next 5 years. Even Intel, the biggest proponent and a direct beneficiary of RMBS stock progression, has determined to use DDRAM in the majority of server systems due to chip set problems, the exorbitant cost and less than expected performance of RDRAM memories. This is good technology and will have a significant market share in the future . . . but the stock price is overdone now imo. Tom?s Hardware has a review of Rambus memory bandwidth that is revealing: tomshardware.com