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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric K. who wrote (136995)	6/8/2001 1:40:01 PM
From: tcmay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Actually, we _should_ worry about this scenario "Re: It's probably _not_ a good idea for Intel to buy whatever company is the hot kid on the block, whether Nvidia or ATI or S3 or 3Dfx or whatever. Intel pays out $200 or $400 or $600 million... "3dfx doesn't exist anymore, neither ATI or S3 are within a hundred feet of the hot part of the block, and NVidia would cost over $7 billion, assuming no premium to current market valuation. You needn't worry about the above scenario." Yes, I know they don't exist. I was making a general point about Intel purchasing expertise by purchasing companies, not commenting on them buying S3 or 3Dfx _today_. And there's a more general point: Several times Intel has bought companies which were "good, but not quite the best." The Chips and Technologies example, maybe some of the networking companies. (Though networking is not my forte, as I use a Mac and "networking just works.") This "cautious" approach might also be characterized as a "cheap approach." Instead of buying the best, they buy the bargain. A very bold "bet the company" move, if they think some market niche is truly the future of the company, would be to buy the very best. If necessary, to do a merger. I'm not suggesting this is needed, just noting that sometimes companies have to pay very dearly for the very best, even if it means a merger or very expensive LBO. Merging with a Juniper or a Cisco might be very, very expensive, but it may be a better longterm deal than, for example, paying $800 million for Milpitas-based Routers-R-Us. --Tim May