Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: La Traguhs who wrote (8810)	10/4/2000 3:44:10 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 9256

LT, Well, you took the words out of my head: "For one, Maxtor keeps MaxAttach which, as was stated by Cannon in the call, will be competitive with SNAP, yet Brown goes on the Maxtor board. Got to be a conflict here." Also, the WDC thing--we've talked about that here before. I can't understand the incredibly low price for HDD here, at least if the $500 million or whatever it is that they attribute to HDD goes with HDD. Also, Hyundai obviously doesn't own 35% of the combined company, with HDD owning more than half. Actually, somehow I thought that Hyundai sold some bonds convertible into Maxtor stock awhile ago that diluted their ownership down to 13 or 14%. But perhaps I remember wrong. I'll listen to the CC tonight. Sam

To: La Traguhs who wrote (8810)	10/4/2000 4:43:58 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Here is a post from HDD Yahoo thread, which has the right angle on this, IMO. HDD is folding Maxtor into itself, but taking the Maxtor corporate shell and, of course, Mike Cannon: messages.yahoo.com It is all so much simpler that way. The NAS conflict suggests that another deal is being worked out, this time for either all of DSS or for Snap by itself. If Snap is flying off of Dell's shelves (they just signed a distribution agreement with DSS, and have it advertised on the front page of their web site), then they might well be interested in the whole thing. It would fit their sales model pretty well, since it is a "snap" to set up and run. And their clout on drive buying will help them enormously, needless to say. Would they also buy the tape drive unit and the library unit? I'm not as sure of that, but there are three components to DSS, each which could be interesting to a company like Dell, CPQ, Sun, or some other large vendor getting into storage. As has been well advertised, people make projections on future spending are suggesting that up to 85% of IT dollars will go to storage in one way or another (purchase, support and maintenance, time) within the next 3 or 4 years, and a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon. I wouldn't object to a DSS takeover, but hope it would be for at least 3 to 3.5x revenue, given the growth prospects of its businesses (especially if SDLT is in fact as robust as DSS management suggests it is). BTW, Yahoo says that HDD had $585 million at the end of last Q. Probably more than $600m now. So Maxtor is buying the business part of it (including, of course, the MKE relationship) for less than $600m. Still not quite as good as Silver Lake/Texas Pacific, which is getting the drive business for almost nothing, but a pretty good deal, I'd say. Sam

To: La Traguhs who wrote (8810)	10/8/2000 3:09:48 PM
From: Gus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

.....By the way, I'm told TDK is using the old R&D 3" wafer fab facility in Northern Japan to get wafers out. Also, I'm told no one is getting TDK/SAE heads in anywhere near the quantities need for the December quarter drive shipments. Wafers are coming out of Nagoyo but a reduced cycle qual will be required at the head level to be certain they're back to the point where they prior to the flood. But, at that point they were having serious problems with sulfur contamination in the wafers causing real problems with the 20 GB/platter heads.... RS take on RDRT: Read-Rite Corporation (Nasdaq: RDRT chart, msgs) ($10.81) Long-Term Attractive Dane Lewis, Network Systems Storage and Software "Read-Rite announced that it plans to reduce its debt position by approximately $200 million by exercising its automatic conversion right for its 10 percent convertible subordinated notes due September, 2004," said Lewis. "We believe this move is a significant positive for RDRT, giving the company a healthier balance sheet by reducing debt. At a strike price of $4.51, the notes convert to approximately 43 million shares of common stock, which will be added to RDRT's current 57 million shares outstanding. This should have a dilutive effect on earnings-per-share for profitable quarters. Based on the company's recent success with the 20GB product iteration, we believe RDRT may be profitable in the December 2000 quarter. However, based on the large short position, which we expect to increase as the conversion date nears, we believe the dilution will be largely priced into the stock. RDRT's entrance into the Optical Filter business looks promising. RDRT has a dedicated team of people looking into the possibility of working on dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) for the fiber optic component market. We believe RDRT will outline its business strategy for this market in the next few months and we foresee product prototypes being available in the first half of calendar 2001." siliconinvestor.com Without getting ghoulish or anything like that, do you have any updates from the recent earthquakes in Japan?