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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Demosthenes who wrote (36351)	8/8/2000 4:33:29 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

Flash memory company expects sales to triple By Bloomberg News August 8, 2000, 11:15 a.m. PT NEW YORK--M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers predicts that its sales will triple this year to $90 million from 1999, boosted by an increase in demand and rising prices for its data-storage products. The Tel Aviv-based company's products are used in large network computers and in telephones, televisions and handheld computers linked to the Internet. "We became the standard in the industry just when the Internet-appliance industry started to boom," M-Systems chief financial officer Ronit Maor told the Bloomberg Forum today. The company also announced that Taiwan-based Acer will begin using M-Systems' DiskOnChip for storage in its network computers and Web telephones. The DiskOnChip, or flash disk, holds computer memory on a small silicon chip instead of on a bigger, more expensive disk on computers that use more power. The DiskOnChip also has more memory than rival flash chips and is compatible with major operating systems, the company said. The company has a goal of widening its gross profit margin--a measure of sales minus costs--by 33 percent this year, Maor said. Prices for M-Systems products this year were little changed or were higher than in 1999. Usually in the chip industry, prices fall. "We had to be aggressive a year ago" on margins to get M-Systems' products into new devices, Maor said. Those products include WebTV set-top boxes on order from Microsoft and handheld computers from Compaq Computer and Philips Electronics. The company's aggressiveness has paid off in increased sales and profit. M-Systems reported last month it had a second-quarter profit of $3.47 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with a loss of $606,000, or 6 cents, a year ago. Revenue more than tripled to $21.7 million. M-Systems has about $127 million in cash and short-term investments, mostly from a March secondary stock offering, the CFO said. The money will be used to develop new products and for marketing, she said, and it might also be used for acquisitions.

To: Demosthenes who wrote (36351)	8/8/2000 4:38:13 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

D, You are correct in saying that if he was truly concerned, he would enumerate his reasons why. I am reading more and more analyst comments with no real substance; in this market it is all too easy to throw out guesses and have the market embrace them as fact. Fact is inneed, the only thing missing from many of these reports. BK