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Technology Stocks : Flash Memory - Players & Prospects -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ausdauer who wrote (28)	1/19/2001 1:59:18 PM
From: hueyone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50

Re: My understanding is that the planned Vanguard flash memory undertaking will cost $2.0 billion to finance. Although there was lots of speculation in the Asian press prior to the Vanguard/SST announcement regarding the terms of the agreement, there has been no announcement from SST regarding the terms or cost of the agreement to SST. In fact the official announcement from SST does not even mention building a fab (as did several of the speculative articles), but instead says Vanguard will manufacture SST's flash memory chips at its facilities in Hsin Chu, Taiwan. Another Asian press article suggests that Vanguard International and SST will also invite major IDMs (integrated device manufacturers) to join the project. We need to wait for SST to announce more details regarding this agreement before drawing any conclusions regarding the cost. biz.yahoo.com Re: I suspect that SSTI will go ahead with an add-on public offering to finance this undertaking. It believe it is very premature to make this conjecture. SST does not have to run an add-on secondary every time they make an agreement with a foundry. Take last year's agreement with National Semiconductor for example. I doubt SST will have to run a secondary this time since there may be other partners involved and they appear to be using existing manufacturing facilities. In addition, I don't believe SST would want to run an add-on secondary while the stock price is so undervalued. Finally, SST currently has lots of cash on its balance sheet and no long term debt so I expect SST could walk in to any bank and get great financing terms if they need to. But again, we will have to wait for SST to announce more details regarding this agreement. Re: It is my hope that as flash production as a whole ramps up in the next 12 to 36 months, SanDisk's licensing agreements will become increasingly more valuable. Since I am a Sandisk shareholder as well as a SSTI shareholder, I hope so too. During this same period, the next 12 to 36 months, SST's licensing revenue will significantly ramp up as well. Re: Both (manufacturing) models have been used successfully. Agreed, but SST has been able to grow both its top and bottom lines at a much faster rate than Sandisk has, and it is my humble opinion that SST will continue to do so. Best, Huey