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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dealer who wrote (26411)	12/20/2000 4:30:17 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Geeze Dealer, Give Greenie credit for both years we just lost..... 2000 & 1999. Question is..... will he fiddle while 1998 burns away too? Ö¿Ö

To: Dealer who wrote (26411)	12/20/2000 4:40:14 PM
From: im a survivor	Respond to of 65232

Atmel Nasdaq: ATML Value in a flash. There's nothing like good old-fashioned panic selling to create buying opportunities. In Red Herring's esteemed opinion, one of the newest opportunities can be found with the stock of Atmel (Nasdaq: ATML), of San Jose, California. Negative momentum shifts in two sectors have victimized the company, which makes flash-memory chips for wireless devices. When the big three handset makers -- Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) -- lowered their estimates for cell phone sales back in July, they sparked a massive sell-off of wireless-related stocks. If the wireless worries weren't bad enough, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC)'s bombshell sales warning in September caused the entire semiconductor sector to implode. As a recipient of this one-two punch, Atmel, trading at $13.06, is down 23 percent since the wireless washout in July, and is 57 percent off its 52-week high set in March. We think the fears of a broadscale wireless slowdown were clearly overblown. It's true that Motorola and Ericsson appear to be struggling, and that's a legitimate concern, because half of Atmel's total revenue comes from communications companies. Motorola is the company's largest customer, accounting for 12 percent of Atmel's total sales in 1999. But Nokia's rosy fourth-quarter outlook shows that it might not be the wireless sector at large that's in trouble; it could be that Motorola and Ericsson are losing ground to Nokia. And Nokia is also one of Atmel's top six customers, according to analysts. If Nokia's results don't convince you, take a look at how Atmel itself is doing. The company is still working at full capacity to fulfill demand for flash-memory chips, and the average selling price for these chips has been climbing over the last few months. "The company actually has a pretty good shot at generating upside revenue surprises in the next few quarters," says Robertson Stephens analyst Eric Rothdeutsch. Another analyst points out that Atmel is likely to benefit even if overall handset sales come in lower than expected, simply because newer phones require far more flash memory. "People forget that even if handset unit sales don't grow as fast, the amount of flash that is needed for next-generation phones is tripling," says Sudeep Balain, a senior analyst with Chase H&Q. Even though Atmel is a semiconductor company, its diversity makes it fairly immune to the problems that the sluggish demand for PCs has created for other chip makers. To that end, one of the more rapidly growing aspects of Atmel's business is making integrated circuits (ICs) for smart cards. Smart cards have yet to take off in the United States, but they are a significant growth opportunity for Atmel in Europe, where they are much more prevalent. Sales from smart card ICs totaled $50 million in 1999, but Mr. Rothdeutsch expects revenue in this segment to total about $100 million in 2000 and $400 million in 2001. All this turmoil has made Atmel a rarity among technology stocks, an honest-to-god, bona fide value play. Atmel's total revenue is expected to increase 37 percent in 2001 to $2.75 billion, according to estimates from the research firm First Call. At 14 times 2001 earnings estimates, the stock is incredibly cheap, especially when you consider that analysts expect earnings to increase 66 percent in 2001. In the case of Atmel, two investing wrongs seem to have made now the right time to buy this stock.