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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (168420)	7/17/2002 4:59:38 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Respond to of 186894

I'm pretty sure they were carrying the HDD business assets on the books for far more than they were able to sell them for. That is probably quite a bit of the writedown. The realignment of microelectronics probably brought a big writedown in FAB equipment. Given the capital costs in both businesses, I can see how they would get up into the $billion+ range. Of course, you have to allow for the fact that they probably dumped just about every conceivable cost and overpriced asset into those two businesses, giving them an excuse to do a "one time non-recurring writedown" rather than depreciating and expensing them in the normal manner. From what I'm hearing of the CC, it seems that the top line was impacted by currency. Analysts may have overestimated the impact of currency issues to the business, thus expected a lower number. Everything else about the report is extremely complex and appears to be highly engineered. NOT things the market appreciates right now. There doesn't seem to be a statement of cash flows in their press release. Somewhat of a red flag to me. Global services is down, which I think may be the best barometer of large-scale IT demand. Bottom line, IBM appears to continue their practice of managing earnings very well, but I think the street is sick of "managed" earnings and endless "one time" writedowns of dubious merit. I don't think things are all that positive. mg