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

To: L. Adam Latham who wrote (138449)	6/30/2001 8:01:50 PM
From: brushwud	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Intel took advantage of the Internet bubble and realized tremendous investment gains. Glory days, well, they'll pass you by... Most of the advantage they realized was in Q2 of last year, when they gained over $1 billion, and most of that was on MU. Even that was kind of an accident, because they originally invested in Micron to induce them to produce RDRAM. Now Rambus is suing Micron and Intel is scrambling to recover from the botched intro of the Pentium 4 due to tying it to Rambus DRAM. But if you look at the $4 billion they sank into their own shares at $54 last year, they've lost almost $2 billion (compared to what it would cost today) plus a year's worth of interest on the cash. So I'm not impressed. The dotcom bubble was a once-in-a-generation phenomenon and it's over. If Intel could have reduced costs by contracting out investment work, you better believe they would have done it. Several years ago they switched their internal management of the stock option program to Merrill Lynch (and recently switched again to UBS Paine Webber) There is a management school of thought that with increasing globalization, all companies need to be increasingly specialized and only focus on the few things they can do best. I know Intel's big enough to buy a few jets and deliver mail & packages between its plants around the world, but wouldn't it make more sense to leave that to FedEx & put all their energy into process technology? Or maybe the guys in the mailroom just aren't as ambitious as the finance types. As far as managing the stock option program, Intel probably switched because UBS was willing to pay them a bigger bribe (up-front fee) than the other guy. 80,000 Intel employees would probably prefer to keep using the same account and not get told they have to switch so some middle manager can justify his existence. But maybe there's an opportunity for you to be the hero who wires up some Itanium servers to Worldcom so Intel optionees can access the Nasdaq, exercise & sell without a broker and prove me wrong.