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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JH who wrote (20752)	8/17/2001 10:24:45 AM
From: JH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

SanDisk lags competitors in CF card offerings (again)! dpreview.com SanDisk has not yet come out with a 512MB type1 CF card, while most of their competitors already have.

To: JH who wrote (20752)	8/19/2001 12:06:59 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

>>SanDisk, the maker of mediocre CF cards, has tremendous financial liability in being a fab owner. I suspect that they will miss their profit targets in a big way during the next couple of quarters.<< The "tremendous financial liability" you mention may be significant as long as the supply of flash cards exceeds short term demand. But this situation is likely to be very temporary, as there are a lot of applications other than digital cameras that can quickly use up this capacity. SanDisk has a 50 percent ownership in a factory that is probably more efficient than older plants, including those built even recently in Taiwan. In this business, the low cost producer makes the profits. The others simply hope for the best. SanDisk also has more financial strength than most other smaller companies making or marketing flash memory. Many of the smaller companies will go out of business in this market, creating more opportunities for larger, better financed companies. We're all wondering if SanDisk can make money in flash memories. The entry of Samsung into the market suggests that (1) it's a better place to be than, say, DRAMs, and (2) demand must be increasing fast enough to warrant building or shifting resources to this area. Samsung, furthermore, does not have much, if any competitive edge in Korea over the locations for other plants in Taiwan or even the U.S. The reason is that the manufacturing process is highly automated, making differences in labor costs irrelevant. I continue to believe that the whole attitude of investors towards flash memory as an investment will change once the market for flash memory is broadened to include non-consumer items, such as personal information cards carrying one's health records. Art