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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Donald Wennerstrom who wrote (12388)	11/5/2003 5:18:48 PM
From: Return to Sender	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95422

Don and all, in my humble opinion there is a good chance of a gap and crap tomorrow cementing another short term local top. The economy aside from a technical standpoint we all need to be careful with our investment dollars. That's why we take profits when we have them. That's why we don't chase stocks when the good news is being fully valued. My point is simply that none of us know if 2050, or 2300, or even 23,000 will be the next real NASDAQ market top but we should know that as long as you are protecting your capital and making a little bit of appreciation along the way then you are doing fine. There will be another pullback in this market. Most likely we open strong tomorrow and then... Just be careful everyone. I may be wrong, as I often am, and I am biased so I could be worse than wrong but lets be careful not to chase the whole market higher on CSCO's better than expected results only to find we could have bought cheaper soon enough. RtS From RobBlack.com Semiconductor Equipment . . . Channel checks suggest Novellus orders are tracking ahead of plan. Firm now estimates that new orders will be in the $250-265 million range. The company's previous guidance on December orders was $230-$245 million. Bank of America thinks mgmt will raise order guidance on their mid-quarter update at the end of the November. Semiconductors . . . National Semiconductor expects revenue in the second quarter ending Nov. 23 to rise 7 percent to 10 percent from the previous period. It earlier forecast 4 percent to 7 percent growth. The Wall Street Journal reports Intel plans to announce its progress in removing a significant roadblock to boosting the performance of chips over the next decade. The change will help prevent electrical current from leaking inside chips, which has been a growing problem as more circuits get packed onto the semiconductors. However, the head of similar research efforts at Texas Instruments, Luigi Colombo, suggests the paper doesn't disclose enough information about its assertions to allow scientists to assess its validity. Mr. Colombo also states TXN will release a paper in December showing comparable progress as INTC. Motorola and IBM are also in the race to solve the electrical leakage problem. ATI Tech announced that Chief Operating Officer, David Orton, intends to enter into a trading plan to sell a portion of his holdings of shares of the company. Mr. Orton anticipates selling up to 1 million shares, subject to market conditions. Assuming the planned sales are completed, Mr. Orton will still hold over 1 million ATI shares, including common shares and vested options. National Semi raised revenue guidance to the range of $454.5-467.3 million (versus original guidance in the $441.8-454.5 million range),while the analysts estimate is $446.4 million. The company cited orders being stronger than expected as the reason for the increase in expectations. "We began this quarter with a solid backlog position and order rates have continued to be strong across a number of our product lines, especially in areas such as power management and wireless." NVIDIA is scheduled to report October quarter (fiscal 3Q04) results after the market close on November 6. Analysts are forecasting revenues of $496.5 million, up 8.0% Quarter over Quarter, and EPS of $0.12. Excluding the MediaQ acquisition, revenue estimate implies 6.6% Quarter over Quarter increase, only slightly higher than the company’s guidance in August of a 5%-6% sequential increase. Consensus is at $486.7mn and $0.12. For the January 2004 quarter, analysts estimate a revenue increase of 4.3% Quarter over Quarter to $518 million, and EPS of $0.13. Expect gross margin to continue to decline in the quarter. Though the NV31 is being replaced by the NV36 being produced at IBM, do not expect the positive impact on margins, if any, to be significant in the January quarter. The 0.13um NV35, NV38, & NV31M products continue to be produced at TSMC. NVIDIA’s product portfolio is not well positioned in light of the ongoing dynamics in the graphics industry: expect notebook and integrated to continue to take share from the desktop and discrete segments respectively in 4th quarter. NVIDIA's lack of an Intel chipset license, and ATI's market dominance in notebook graphics, mean that these dynamics continue to work against NVIDIA. On the discrete side, following the latest round of product introductions from NVIDIA and ATI, the performance leadership in high-end graphics appears to remain with ATI with its Radeon 9800 XT. This will put continued pressure on NVIDIA as the high-end products waterfall to the mainstream segment after about a quarter. The chipset business also appears to have hit a market share ceiling in 3rd quarter. While NVIDIA’s stock has been a laggard recently, having declined 3% over the past two months versus the 12% increase in the SOX, we do not yet see a reason to get excited about the stock, given the overall market dynamics, continuing competitive concerns, and the lack of visibility on the company's margins. The stock’s valuation is also not inexpensive, at 33x forward 12-month EPS. robblack.com

To: Donald Wennerstrom who wrote (12388)	11/5/2003 5:20:03 PM
From: BWAC	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 95422

<Some information should come out of all that;-)> Yes some info should come from those econome numbers. Garbage in info, garbage out info. Initial claims will fall despite continued layoffs and downsizing. Despite lines flowing out the doors at the local unemployment offices. Despite people lining up at 5am in the morning for an office that opens at 8:30. But I am most certain initial claims will be reported down. Nonfarm Payrolls will increase as the malls staff up for Christmas sales and another Burger King opens. The unemployment rate will be steady. Largely because people dropped off the rolls. Go to your favorite state data. You'll be able to see it clearly broken down. Unemployed will fall, yet the Employed won't increase. Where'd they go? Hourly earnings will be up. Average Workweek will be up. I'm certain they will all be reported better than expected. And I don't belive one bit of it based on what I see in real life.