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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Citron who wrote (60648)	2/16/2002 9:17:11 AM
From: John Trader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

AMAT in Barrons & Worth + UWB Article: Article on the stock options issue in today's Barrons, points out techs would be hurt more if this policy is changed: ..."Sans options expense, Applied Materials reported $508 million, or 60 cents. Counting options, Applied earned $291 million, or 24 cents, and the semiconductor equipment firm would've been valued at 163 times earnings, instead of 65 times." ... In the March Worth Magazine, AMAT is listed with CSCO, BRCD, MSFT, others as stocks to avoid. The AMAT reference argues basically the valuation is too high (at a price of 40) given INTC capex cutbacks, and that "semiconductor plants are running at less than 2/3 capacity". Similar to the Barron's Round table argument by John Neff. Ultra Wide Band (UWB) Article in Worth: A really interesting article, same topic as what was exciting that MIT futurist guy interviewed by Maria on CNBC MarketWeek about a week ago. A snip from the article: "The UWB Era" "What is the total market value of America's telephone, mobile phone, cable television, and Internet service providers? It must be close to a trillion dollars. What if I told you there exists a technology that threatens every one of those trillion dollars? It threatens to replace all those traditional business not in 10 or 20 years from now, but by the middle of this decade. And by the time you are reading these words, this new technology will probably have been approved by the Federal Communications Commission as a completely unlicensed service that can be used anywhere, anytime, by anybody." ... The article points out this wireless technology is very secure, ultra low power, and the data carrying capacity is "enormous". The downside is range, about a kilometer, but this is apparently about the same as for PCS cell phones. The way it would work I guess is that a lot of service providers would emerge all over the place. It seems this could really threaten the "last mile" phone and cable companies, especially the local phone companies. I already know people who are using cable internet service + cell phones, and not even connecting the old phone line. If this solves the last mile problem in a few years, it would be great for all of tech, including AMAT. John