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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (8543)	3/14/2001 9:50:59 AM
From: Caxton Rhodes	Respond to of 196545

Qualcomm CFO Thornley Says Spinco IPO Now Unlikely By JOHNATHAN BURNS Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK -- Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) Chief Financial Officer Anthony Thornley said Tuesday it is likely there will be no public offering of its chipset manufacturing business Spinco, which is to be spun off to shareholders later this year. "(With) current market conditions, there's a reasonable possibility we won't do an IPO," he said. "The chip company doesn't need the cash." Qualcomm is spinning off its chipset business to compete better in the chipset market. The spin allows Qualcomm to aggressively protect its intellectual property rights on wireless technology without damaging chipset sales. Thornley, speaking at a Merrill Lynch Global Communications Investor Conference in Manhattan, also said Qualcomm's licensing and royalty position is as strong in wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA) wireless technology as it is in current CDMA technologies. Even so, Thornley said Qualcomm's CDMA2000 wireless technology, the next-generation competitor to WCDMA, will provide carriers cost savings. He said carriers such as Verizon Communications (VC) and Sprint PCS (PCS) will be able to gain market share in the United States because the technology will provide them a competitive advantage. Additionally, Thornley said the expected slowdown in handset sales growth this year is mainly based on handsets using the European technology, not CDMA. "There's no question the slowing economy has an impact on markets like the United States, but I think fundamentally the factors are different for CDMA," he said. Thornley also said he isn't concerned that carriers have built up large inventories of handsets. "Our information suggests there's no significant inventory buildup," he said. Qualcomm expects more than 90 million CDMA-based handsets will be sold globally this year. Thornley also said recent decisions by Korean wireless service providers to use a technology migration path to WCDMA was influenced by their hopes of drawing investments from Japanese and European service providers. He said those Korean carriers still have the option of choosing CDMA2000 even as their network upgrades progress. -By Johnathan Burns, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-202; johnathan.burns@dowjones.com