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Strategies & Market Trends : MARKET INDEX TECHNICAL ANALYSIS - MITA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J.T. who wrote (5501)	12/8/2000 3:27:48 AM
From: J.T.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19219

INTEL Warns from Bloomberg for the archives: Intel Says Fourth-Quarter Sales Will Miss Targets (Update4) By Cesca Antonelli Santa Clara, California, Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp., the world's biggest computer-chip maker, said fourth-quarter sales will miss its forecasts because of ``large cancellations by customers worldwide.'' Intel now expects sales to be little changed from the prior quarter's $8.73 billion. The company had predicted sales growth of 4 percent to 8 percent in the quarter, after posting lower-than- expected sales in the September period. Gateway Inc., Apple Computer Inc. and other personal computer- related companies have reduced sales and profit expectations for this quarter and next year, citing sluggish personal-computer demand. That had prompted concern that Intel, which gets most of its sales from PCs, would fall short this quarter as well. ``I'm disappointed,'' said John Spytek, an analyst with Banc One Investment Advisors, which owns about 4.5 million shares. ``It's clearly disappointing given that Intel had already guided everyone toward lower revenue growth for the quarter.'' The shares of Intel dropped as low as $30 after the revenue outlook before recovering to $32.75. They rose 56 cents to $32.31 earlier in the day before trading was halted. The stock has lost 57 percent of its value since touching a record $75.81 in August, and is on track for its first annual decline since 1988. `Uniform' Shortfall Every Intel product line, except flash-memory chips -- from PC processors to networking equipment and chips -- saw lower-than- expected demand, Chief Financial Officer Andy Bryant said in an interview. The shortfall is ``pretty uniform'' across the Americas, Asia and Europe, he said. ``It truly is a situation where every place we're in worldwide and nearly every product line we sell'' will show slack demand, Bryant said. He declined to comment on the outlook for the first quarter or next year, and wouldn't say which PC makers had canceled orders. In the year-ago fourth quarter, Intel had profit excluding acquisition costs of $2.4 billion, or a pre-split 69 cents a share, on sales of $8.21 billion. More Evidence Evidence for an all-around bad quarter for PC-related companies is piling up. Apple, Gateway, Micron Electronics Inc. and others have cut sales targets. The price of memory chips, another indicator of PC demand, has fallen by half in the past three months. Gateway reduced targets for the fourth quarter because its PC sales over the Thanksgiving weekend fell 30 percent from a year ago. Apple blamed an expected $600 million fiscal first-quarter sales shortfall on slack demand worldwide. That led some investors to wonder when Intel would change its forecast. Many suspected it would cut its projections. ``It's a disappointment, but it doesn't come as a surprise,'' said Jerry Dodson, manager of the Parnassus Equity Income Fund, which owns 800,000 Intel shares. ``I didn't want it to happen, I hoped it wouldn't happen, but I suspected it might happen.'' Some investors said it could have been much worse. ``It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be,'' said Noah Blackstein of Dynamic Mutual Funds, which recently sold its position in Intel. ``I thought sales would go down. Flat's not so bad.'' China, Japan Slack demand in Europe hurt the chipmaker's results last quarter, and the picture hasn't improved much since then. Though consumer PC sales in Japan and China remain ``brisk,'' demand is weak throughout the rest of the world, Intel Vice President Sean Maloney said on a conference call. ``In the past two or three weeks, we began to see increasingly negative signs for the fourth quarter,'' Maloney said. Intel still sees gross margin, or the percentage of sales left after subtracting costs, at about 63 percent because it has cut costs in its factories. Expenses will be unchanged, rather than rising 6 percent to 8 percent as expected. Capital spending for this year will be $6.5 billion instead of the $6 billion predicted earlier, because equipment suppliers are getting the chipmaker more tools faster than expected, Bryant said. Flash, which stores data when devices such as cell phones and electronic organizers are turned off, escaped the slowdown. Intel also saw some strength in its chips for server computers that run corporate networks and Web sites. Investors said that's important since the company is preparing to introduce its powerful Itanium processor for servers. ``They'll get cracking again next year,'' Dodson said. ``By next year, sales will be growing again.'' Best Regards, J.T.

To: J.T. who wrote (5501)	12/14/2000 12:13:04 AM
From: J.T.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19219

Dollar Holds Near 16-Month High Against Yen on Bush Victory By Mari Murayama and Miki Anzai Tokyo, Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar held yesterday's gains against the yen and euro on expectations Texas Governor George W. Bush, now the U.S. president-elect, will maintain policies favorable to the U.S. currency, analysts said. ``The Bush administration will keep the strong dollar policy to avoid rapid fund flows out of the U.S. as policymakers try to slow down the economy without making it fall into recession,'' said Tomoyuki Kawakami, deputy general manager for currency trading at Shinsei Bank Ltd. The dollar traded near a 16-month high at 112.46 yen, little changed from 112.27 yen in late New York trading yesterday. Against the euro, it traded at 87.69, compared with 87.7 in New York. Bush rival, Democrat Al Gore, conceded the election, giving the presidency to the Republican governor and son of former U.S. President George Bush. A Bush victory may bolster the dollar against major currencies because the Republican is likely to adopt business- friendly policies and probably won't call for intervention in currency markets, analysts said. Bush said he would begin working on tax cuts soon after he is sworn in on Jan. 20, along with Social Security reform, education, and drug coverage under Medicare. Euro The dollar's gains against the euro are likely to be limited as investors see the economic growth gap between the U.S. and Europe is narrowing, analysts said. ``There will be a marked narrowing in the growth differential'' between the U.S. and euro-region,'' said Audrey Childe-Freeman, an economist at CIBC World Markets. She sees the euro at 96 cents by the second quarter next year. The euro has declined about 25 percent against the dollar since its January 1999 debut, in part because the U.S. economy has been growing faster than the euro region's. Signs of a slowing economy in the U.S., including a rise in unemployment and a decline in manufacturing activity, helped the euro rebound from its record low of 82.30 U.S. cents set Oct. 26. A U.S. report yesterday showed retail sales unexpectedly fell in November, another sign economic growth is slowing. That may give Federal Reserve policy-makers, who next meet Dec. 19, more reason to adopt a bias toward cutting interest rates to prevent economic growth from winding down too quickly. Lower interest rates may reduce the attractiveness of dollar- based deposits. The European Central Bank has raised interest rates seven times in 13 months to ward off inflation. Traders said the ECB will probably leave rates on hold for a while after Euro-zone economy grew 0.7 percent in the three months from July to September, down from 0.8 percent in the previous quarter. The bank's governing council will meet to set interest rates today. Rate Cut? The yen may extend its decline toward the year end after the Bank of Japan's Tankan survey yesterday added to evidence that Japan's recovery is stalling, said Shinsei Bank's Kawakami. The survey's main index showed confidence among large manufacturers was unchanged at 10 points in the quarter ending December. That was below the level of plus 12 forecast in a Bloomberg News poll of economists. The survey also showed the index may drop to 7 in March. ``I see no reasons to buy yen aggressively now that the outlook for the Japanese economy is unclear,'' Kawakami said. The Japanese government will in February formally revise its July to September gross domestic product figures to show the world's No. 2 economy shrank rather than expanded 0.2 percent as reported last week, the Asahi newspaper reported, without citing sources. The initial GDP report overestimated capital spending, the paper said. Given these weaker economic indicators, the Bank of Japan may be pressed to cut interest rates just four months after lifting it from near zero in August, economists said. While bank policymakers are expected to keep rates steady at 0.25 percent when they meet tomorrow, they may face political pressure to trim rates once again if the economy shows more signs of slowing down, or slides back into recession, they said. ``If the economy decelerates next year, the BOJ will be questioned whether its August rate rise was the right decision, and politicians will blame the bank ahead of July's election,'' said Yukari Sato, a senior economist at Nikko Salomon Smith Barney Ltd. In other trading, the dollar fell to 1.7139 Swiss francs from 1.7148 francs in late New York. The British pound was quoted at $1.4563, up000 from $1.4561 yesterday. Best Regards, J.T.