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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: invinciblewimp who wrote (79579)	11/5/2001 12:10:02 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 93625

DRAM rivals question Korean government's role in Hynix bailout By Jack Robertson, EBN Nov 5, 2001 (8:01 AM) URL: ebnews.com The Korean government could become the controlling power behind a vastly changed ownership of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. as a result of a $6 billion financial bailout package approved last week. As part of the rescue plan, several domestic, government-controlled Korean banks are leading a $2.3 billion debt for equity swap in the troubled DRAM maker. The banks, which hold the overwhelming share of Hynix debt, are part of an 18-bank group that could end up next year with stock ownership of 49% or more in the chip maker, far exceeding the 9% now held by former corporate parent Hyundai Group and its subsidiaries. Foreign DRAM rivals, themselves under intense financial pressure as the electronics industry's slump drags on, were leery of how the Hynix bailout will fare. Vocal critic Micron Technology Inc. is pressing the U.S. Trade Representative and U.S. Treasury to lodge a protest with the World Trade Organization over what the company called unfair government subsidies. The European Union has threatened to file a similar complaint with the WTO. “[This is] an unfair government subsidization of Hynix to keep a bankrupt company alive that otherwise should not be allowed to exist,” said Jan du Preez, president of Infineon Technologies America, San Jose. "It distorts the market and puts the other largest DRAM manufacturers at an extreme disadvantage.” Hynix last week confirmed that the deal included a $2.3 billion exchange of debt for equity shares. Five domestic banks and Citibank N.A. of the United States also agreed to extend $500 million in additional loans, scaled back from the $770 million that Hynix had sought. The company's remaining debt, which amounts to about $4.2 billion, will be rolled over. The Korean banks will receive convertible bonds that can be exchanged after May 31 for shares in Hynix at the market price of the stock at the time. The conversion price set last week was $2.38 per share, which would give the banks a 49% stake in Hynix. However, last week, Hynix was trading at about $1 per share, and any price on May 31 next year below the $2.38 target would give the banks, and by extension the Korean government, majority ownership. The banks last week pledged to dispose of all the Hynix shares they acquire after Dec. 31, 2002, “in a timely and orderly manner.” This would require selling off half or more of all of Hynix's shares at the time. But the trading in Hynix stock has become a wild affair even now, with 250 million shares, or one-quarter of the now-existing 1 billion shares, sold in a single day last week. Farhad Tabrizi, vice president for worldwide marketing at Hynix in San Jose, played down the role of government-owned banks in the rescue package. “I don't think there's any connection in the refinancing agreement,” Tabrizi said. “The banks are acting to protect their interests and to sustain Hynix.” Tabrizi added that despite their potentially dominant stake in Hynix, the banks have said they will not seek a management role in the company. Five of the banks in the equity swap, which hold about 75% of Hynix's debt, have close ties to the Korean government. Two of those, The Korean Development Bank and the National Agricultural Cooperative, are government agencies, while a third, Hanvit Bank, is government owned. Given the ties, a spokeswoman for Boise, Idaho-based Micron charged that the government-control-led banks are acting as a conduit to funnel taxpayer funds to Hynix. The spokeswoman said Micron “is watching very closely to see if the big debt-for-equity swap results in the government gaining a controlling voice in Hynix through the banks it also controls.” Tabrizi said the $500 million in fresh loans will be used for operating capital and to help upgrade Hynix fabs. The company last week said it has started pilot production of its new 0.15-micron wafer line in Eugene, Ore. and expects to start full production in the first quarter of 2002.

To: invinciblewimp who wrote (79579)	11/5/2001 1:10:41 PM
From: Ali Chen	Respond to of 93625

wimp, "Since the 845 chipset has come out, the demand for the 850 has gone up" Do you have any data to support this? Better try any retail store to find any Rambus system. There is none. Where all these 850 are going? I don't recall any recent explosion of PC market. If the 850 is totally gone from retail, where it goes?

To: invinciblewimp who wrote (79579)	11/5/2001 1:20:00 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi invinciblewimp; Re: "Today, Rambus took another large step forward with their RaSer initiative." Admit the truth about Transwitch. Before today none of you had ever heard of them. The only references to Transwitch on this thread before today was from 2 years ago, and had nothing to do with Rambus at all: December 1999 And TranSwitch Corp., a fabless maker Internet connectivity ICs based in Shelton, Conn., on Wednesday announced a 3-for-2 stock split of its common stock. That followed another 3-for-2 split in April that brought the number of commo shares outstanding in the company to 25.3 million. The just-announced split will bring that to 42.0 million shares next February. #reply-12319102 What you guys needed was for CSCO to license RaSer, not Transwitch. That's why RMBS is only up by 6%. Heck, look at the industry group Rambus is in today, most of them are up too: siliconinvestor.com Look at it this way. Transwitch has total sales of $105 million per year: biz.yahoo.com Their most recent quarter's sales are down 67% from a year ago: Net revenues for the three and the six months ended June 30, 2001 decreased 67.7% and 19.0% from the comparable three and six months of the prior year. biz.yahoo.com *Now how much royalties do you expect to collect from a company who's total sales are only $100 million per year, and are decreasing at 67% from the previous year?* Micron sold almost 40x as much as TXCC last year: biz.yahoo.com That's why Wall Street ignored this PR, it just doesn't matter. Heck, AMD came out with a fully expected new speed version of the Athlon XP and they're up 5%. The Nasdaq is up 2.3%. Re: "I think the news that Intel has chosen Rambus RDRAM for network appliances (not DDR) ..." In fact, what Intel chose RDRAM for was their "network processor". And that design win is not "news", it was decided by Intel 2 years ago. It's just news to you. Intel chose RDRAM for network processors back when it was still almost reasonable to expect RDRAM to ever be as cheap as the alternatives. And maybe you didn't bother to read the fine print. Here, I'll help you interpret the article: ... Intel considered [Bilow: "considered" is a past tense of to consider. In fact, Intel made their consideration 2 years ago, and that was before it was obvious that DDR had won.] both DDR and RDRAM for the new network chip, said Bill Duggan, marketing manager for network processors at the Santa Clara, Calif., company. “We selected [Bilow: there's that past tense again] Rambus because we believe it offers the highest performance with the narrow bandwidth that network processors need,” he said. Intel hasn't given up entirely on DDR, which may be used in select networking applications [Bilow: go back and read that line again. That's Intel saying that they're using DDR on network stuff that they're working on right now. They just haven't announced it.], Duggan said. Intel uses SDRAM with its existing IXP1200 NPU. ... ebnews.com Eventually Intel's DDR based network hardware will be finished up, they'll get working silicon, and they'll announce it, just like they did with P4 chipsets. But Network Processors are a lot more complicated than chipsets, so it takes Intel longer to get the bad Rambus decisions out of their network processors than their chipsets. Wait about another 6 months or a year. Other companies have already announced high speed network processors with other than RDRAM, it's only a matter of time before Intel does too. (See #reply-16500718) -- Carl