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

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (21237)	11/28/2001 6:50:57 AM
From: Wallace Rivers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Craig, I agree with you that there will most likely be little or no good news from SNDK in the near future. That is why I would only consider dabbling in the stock on a trading basis - and that, I have not done. 64 meg CF @ $30 (Best Buy) and 128 meg CF @ $60 (Costco) is not good pricing, especially considering that I paid about $65 for 64 meg from a deep discount mail order place late last May. On another matter, flying, I hope you are right, and you probably are. Let's just hope there is not another external event, which obviously wouldn't be good for the economy, and especially any travel related stocks. I think the easy money has already been made in the airlines and cruise companies, they are generally 50% up off the bottom. I've always believed, and continue to believe, that LUV is by far the strongest financially, best managed airline that one can invest long term, not speculate, in.

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (21237)	11/28/2001 7:04:14 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 60323

Craig, assuming that SNDK continues to have huge overcapacity and low profit margins due to competition from other firms with equally large overcapacity, the profit picture looks bleak. At least it looks that way for the first half of 2002. Beyond that, the picture is quite cloudy. I take it that you are not very optimistic about SanDisk's retail business, particularly the part that sells CF, SDMC, and the MemoryStick products. I take it that you also do not believe that SNDK will receive much in the way of royalties from competitors who make or sell removable flash memory cards. I frankly don't know how much or how little they will receive in the way of royalties, but I suspect that some firms, including Viking, will simply abandon the market, leaving the remaining firms with somewhat better prospects for higher unit sales, if not higher margins. Second, the output of the FlashVision joint venture in Virginia is split 50-50 between SanDisk and Toshiba. Both will share either in the misfortunes or the profits. I think there is enough proprietary technology here to allow them to make a reasonable profit, at least on increasing demands for uses in cameras and hand held computers. I don't know how well MP3 players are doing, but it looks like there are many other systems that use hard drives and CD's to make this a slower growing market than was originally anticipated. The missing link in the profit chain is the health information or personal ID card application. This is obviously what will keep SanDisk from becoming just another consumer product company, whose earnings relate more to consume confidence and discretionary funds than anything else. Art

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (21237)	11/29/2001 6:41:34 PM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Craig, although purely anecdotal, I noticed... ...that two of my local BestBuy stores (including a local BestBuy "megastore") managed to sell out of SanDisk 64 MB cards sold last Friday at a price of $29.99 each. This was essentially a give-a-way as I see it. What it does mean, however, is that the start-up costs for going digital are way down. You can buy a nice 2.1 megapixel camera for under $300.00 and a decent 3.3 megapixel camera for under $400.00 and not worry too much about the extras like media. Last year at retail 64 MB CF was selling for over $100 going into the holidays. That was an impediment to a digital camera purchase. I would hope we will witness an acceleration in digital camera sales as we go from sales to adventurous digital nerds (myself included here), hobbyists and prosumers to average consumers. At most school, work, and social functions I have been to in the last few months it is rare that one sees a digital camera. While travelling and on vacation I have been impressed with the adoption of digital cameras. Those able to travel presumably have greater discretionary income, which accounts for the difference. Anyway, as Eli once said, we are on Main Street, but we just turned the block. We still have a very large untapped market. The only damper right now is the job situation. This past Monday AM I had 7 clinic patients scheduled, of whom 3 had recently been laid-off. Two were middle management people and a third was on an assembly line at a company he told me was "recession proof" earlier this year. Okay, again only anecdotal information, but I think many consumers will be cautious with big ticket purchases including spendy digital toys. Most of these purchases cannot be postponed forever. I belive they are just too attractive for most to resist indefinitely. Other Parallel Developments BTW, my father-in-law e-mailed me this week that they are installing broadband connections in his neighborhood in northern Sweden. This is being promoted by the local telecom and partially subsidized by the local school district. I do think it is a sign of the penetration of broadband access. Broadband enables Internet users and heightens the on-line experience. This can only be good for companies like SNDK. Aus