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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarksterh who wrote (120629)	6/18/2002 8:29:54 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

I had realized that there was some slop in the definition of 'cash flow', there surely is. but if you go back and look at what i said ("in the context of service providers, EBITDA MEANS THE SAME THING AS CASH FLOW"), you will see that i was providing a specific context. c/f is kind of a vernacular phrase that can be defined differently in different contexts, but i think if you read enough of the financial press (i am referring here to educated materials one has to pay for, not the latest Money Magazine article hyping QCOM), you will find plenty of evidence that "cash flow" and "EBITDA" are used interchangeably by many people. this is certainly common enough for me to have responded to your cash flow question by providing EBITDA figures, without needing to be rebuffed by you as if i were changing the subject. especially when you didn't even define cash flow yourself. you would also find, if you read publications like Barron's or OID or Grant's, that the interviewer will frequently ask the interviewee to define cash flow after saying "XYZ trades at five times cash flow". often the definition is just EBITDA, but sometimes it is different depending on the business (and the investor). but you would need to read real discussions of actual professional investors to see this type of thing, instead of seeing what comes up in "investopedia". Note, that anything with depreciating capital expenditures as large as AWE's (or even PCS) is more like an Intel than a TCI. For instance, TCI invests in lines and the lines are good for 30 years with only relatively minor upgrades needed thereafter you are mistaken if you think AWE is valued like INTC. AWE is a service provider; INTC a manufacturer. AWE is valued at a multiple of EBITDA, like TCI. just ask slacker, who has previously commented on similarities between the cable and wireless industries. having said that, i do tend to agree with you that the wireless industry is dissimilar to cable in that it requires more frequent investment. but there is another (more important, and more fundamental) dissimilarity: wireless SPs have no monopoly rents. if you dislike Sprint, you can switch to AWE or Voicestream or VZ. if you dislike Time Warner, you can...not watch TV. because wireless SPs do not have a monopoly, they are forever in competition. they are forever upgrading and lowering their prices at the same time. this is a textbook model of a SICK INDUSTRY. the only solution is for many of the players to go bankrupt, after which the industry can consolidate and hobble into the future. the industry will probably need to be much more heavily regulated to limit competition in the future if the surviving cos are to be profitable, imo. but that's just my opinion on where the wireless industry's at. it's a separate issue from the observation that MANY MANY analysts and investors use c/f and EBITDA interchangeably when talking about the wireless industry (because they assumed it would be just like cable).