To: Dave B who wrote (47607 ) 7/20/2000 12:09:04 PM From: Estephen Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 93625 Rambus Falls on Concern About Royalties, Competition (Update3) By Michael Lovell Mountain View, California, July 19 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of Rambus Inc., a computer-memory chip designer, fell 7.2 percent on concern that rivals may enter the market and that some chipmakers won't pay royalty fees to license its patents. Rambus fell 7 3/8 to 94 1/2 in Nasdaq trading. The stock has risen more than fivefold this year, making it the third-best performer in the Russell 1000 Index. Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. agreed last month to pay Rambus royalties for a broader range of memory-chip designs, avoiding legal battles over the patents. Investors are concerned that other memory-chip makers such as NEC Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. aren't likely to follow suit, said Drew Peck, an analyst at SG Cowen Securities Corp. ``People are buying this stock for its potential, and that's where there might be some changing sentiment,'' said Peck, who has a ``neutral'' rating on Rambus shares. Two of the world's largest computer-chipset designers, Via Technologies Inc. and Acer Laboratories Inc., said they will oppose an Intel Corp. plan to exclusively use a Rambus memory chip standard for Intel's new Willamette processor. Both Via and Acer said they would like to use an alternative to Rambus's standard for chipsets, called double-data rate, or DDR. Rambus's patents for chips are used by No. 1 computer-chip maker Intel to speed software applications. Rambus chip designs speed information from one chip to another in personal computers and video-game consoles. Intellectual Property Mountain View, California-based Rambus said yesterday on a conference call that the number of people working on intellectual property for the company is expanding and that it's in talks with a number of other companies over royalty payments it should be getting. The company has more than 85 U.S. patents, President and Chief Executive Geoff Tate said. ``We have put together a substantial intellectual property team, and we expect to sign additional licensees over time,'' he said. That means legal costs could rise and ``there's not likely to be a huge amount of offsetting revenue,'' Peck said. UBS Warburg analyst Gregory Mischou this morning reiterated his ``strong buy'' rating on the stock, writing in a report that Rambus's agreements with Toshiba and Hitachi, as well as the introduction this fall of Intel's Pentium 4 chip and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 game console will help sales rise. ``The long-term competitive landscape is evolving in Rambus's favor and near-term the available market is expanding,'' Mischou wrote. Yesterday, Rambus said net income rose to $4.6 million, or 4 cents a share, in the quarter ended June 30, from $2 million, or a split-adjusted 2 cents, a year earlier. The results matched the average expectations of four analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial. Revenue rose 67 percent to $17.8 million from $10.6 million.