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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (41130)	4/27/2004 4:39:59 PM
From: Logain Ablar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69873

someone not as bullish as zeev hussmanfunds.com although hussman can be early as I believe zeev has the 1st shot of cycical bear coming back right after the new naz high in june/july time frame

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (41130)	4/27/2004 11:10:23 PM
From: Johnny Canuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69873

Booming demand for flat-screen televisions and computer monitors proved to be a boon for Corning (GLW) investors on Friday. Shares of the Corning, N.Y., company jumped 18% to $12.13 after it reported a first-quarter profit on rising revenues. The maker of the liquid-crystal display, or LCD, glass used in desktops, laptops and sleek TVs expects orders to remain brisk in the current quarter and beyond. "It beat its own guidance by a wide margin," says John Harmon, an analyst at Needham & Co, "which it had just reaffirmed in early March." Late Thursday, Corning posted earnings of $55 million, or four cents a share, reversing a loss of $205 million, or 17 cents, a year earlier. Excluding after-tax charges, earnings came in at $115 million, or eight cents, well above both Wall Street's and the company's forecast of five cents. Revenues jumped 13% to $844 million, beating its own guidance of $770 million to $830 million. For the fourth quarter, Corning lost $29 million on $820 million in sales. Improved manufacturing capabilities and growing demand for LCD glass lifted gross margins to 35.5% from 29.5% the fourth quarter. Profits in the display division, which makes the LCD glass, more than tripled to $118 million from $37 million a year ago on a 97% surge in sales. Sequential sales of LCD glass grew 16% due to volume increases, stable pricing and favorable foreign-exchange rates. Two million LCD TVs were shipped in the first quarter, the company said, nearly half the 4.5 million shipped in all of 2003. Average screen sizes in the quarter grew to 21.6 square inches, up from the 2003 average of 18.8 square inches. LCD computer monitors reached world-wide market penetration of 49%, up from 46% in the fourth quarter. And consumers' growing preference for portability from their computers drove laptop sales up two percentage points to 27% of the total computer market. Corning has been sold out of LCD glass for the past two quarters and remains sold out for the second quarter. It's the only commercial supplier of the high-end Generation 6 glass, and controls more than 50% of the total market. Its two smaller competitors, Asahi Glass and NH Techno Glass, also have no extra supply to fill manufacturers' growing demand. "We are meeting all of our contracts with customers, but they are asking for more, and other customers are asking for more," says Corning spokeswoman Monica Ott. "We're trying to keep up with demand by adding additional capacity." Corning is spending $600 million to expand its Asian plants over the next two years after spending $200 million last year. Though the display division's stellar performance captured the headlines, most of Corning's other operations fared well, too. First-quarter sales rose 15% to $141 million in the environmental-technologies segment, and increased 20% to $79 million in the life-sciences unit. Only the telecommunications business, which specializes in fiber optics, disappointed. It posted a $43 million loss on sales of $312 million, much worse than the $18 million fourth-quarter loss on sales of $357 million. <?b> More clamoring for flat-screen monitors and notebook computers will drive up results in the second quarter. Corning expects 50% world-wide growth for the entire LCD glass market in 2004, with the company also seeing 50% volume growth. It also expects the market to grow by 30% to 50% annually for the next several years For the second quarter, Corning expects earnings in the range of seven cents to nine cents a share, on sales of $900 million to $950 million. A year earlier, the company lost $22 million, or two cents a share, on sales of $752 million. Quote: "Our updated $17 price target represents 30 times our new 2005 earnings estimate of 58 cents," Needham's Harmon wrote in a Friday research note. "Although Corning has historically traded at approximately 20 times forward earnings and two times forward sales, we think Corning deserves a higher multiple in the intermediate term due to the high 40% to 50% growth rate of its display-glass business." (Harmon doesn't own shares of Corning; Needham & Co. doesn't have an investment-banking relationship with the company.)